Kansas GOP overrides gov’s veto to enact bill that could ban “husbands from wives’ shared hospital rooms”

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Republican lawmakers in Kansas overrode Gov. Laura Kelly’s (D) veto of an extreme bathroom bill that Democrats say will ban people from visiting loved ones in hospitals, nursing homes, and dorms if they aren’t of the same sex.

“As I said in my veto statement, this is a poorly drafted bill with significant, far-reaching consequences,” Kelly said in a statement. “Not only will this bill keep brothers from visiting sisters’ dorms and husbands from wives’ shared hospital rooms, it will cost Kansas taxpayers millions of dollars to comply with this very vague legislation.”

Kelly vetoed S.B. 244 last Friday. But, because Republicans have supermajorities in both chambers of the legislature, they were able to override her veto in a party-line vote. The Kansas House of Representatives voted 87-37 in favor of overriding her veto, and the state Senate voted 31-9 in favor. Both votes occurred in the last 24 hours.

“Kansas Democrats are for They/Them,” Senate President Ty Masterson (R) said in a statement. “I will continue to fight for you, and protect women and girls across our state.”

Republicans in the state legislature passed S.B. 244 last month. The bill was originally about gender markers on drivers’ licenses, but Republicans used a sneaky maneuver called “gut-and-go” to hold hearings on the drivers’ license part of the bill and then change the text to include bathroom provisions, without holding hearings on those bathroom provisions.

The bathroom provisions will ban trans people from using facilities that do not align with their sex assigned at birth in government buildings.

The law “obviously discriminates against transgender people in ways that make our lives exponentially more difficult and dangerous,” said state Rep. Abi Boatman (D), who is transgender.

Democrats stressed that the bathroom provisions were poorly written and would affect any situation where people are being housed in shared living spaces, like dorms, nursing homes, and hospitals.

“If your grandfather is in a nursing home in a shared room, as a granddaughter, you would not be able to visit him. If your sister is living in a dorm at K-State, as a brother, you would not be able to visit her in her room,” Kelly said in a statement when vetoing the bill. “I believe the Legislature should stay out of the business of telling Kansans how to go to the bathroom and instead stay focused on how to make life more affordable for Kansans.”

“If you feel you have to accompany your nine-year-old daughter to the restroom at a sporting event, as a father, you would have to either enter the women’s restroom with her or let her use the restroom alone.”

State Sen. Kellie Warren (R) said that the unintended consequences won’t happen because, she told CJ Online, they’re “not the subject of the bill.”

The bill will also ban trans people from getting the gender markers updated on their driver’s licenses. The Kansas Department of Revenue will have to invalidate licenses where the gender marker has been corrected, and the same applies to birth certificates.