Kansas’ anti-trans drivers license/bathroom law: 3 months later #transrights #statelaw #usa

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]today makes 3 months since over 1,700 trans people in Kansas found out that their driver's licenses were invalidated overnight. That if they were caught driving while trans, even on their way to update those licenses, they could face up to 6 months in jail. Housed with people of their assigned gender at birth, because that's the law in Kansas, too. And by the way, that same law that invalidated driver's licenses also forces trans people into the bathroom with their assigned gender and lets people sue them for using the wrong one.

[00:00:26]So, a bathroom bounty law. This kind of anti-trans legislation is not new. Here in the US, we faced an onslaught of it throughout the 2020s. And really, for the last decade, ever since HB2, the OG bathroom bill in North Carolina back in 2016. And there's been a discernable pattern to that onslaught where one state says, "Let's see how we can over trans people today." And then a bunch of other states are like, "Yeah, we should try that here, too." Until some other state goes, "Hold my beer."

[00:00:52]And then proposes something even worse and kicks off the whole cycle all over again. So now, whether trans people can legally pee or drive or play sports or access healthcare or exist in public as ourselves varies from state to state and keeps changing at a rate that feels impossible to keep up with. That's actually why I waited 3 months to talk about Kansas. Instead of just reacting in the moment, I wanted to see a little bit more of what the aftermath would be and whether it would follow this pattern we've already seen. What I've observed is much more disturbing because the situation in Kansas doesn't just follow the pattern, it escalates it. Which was what I feared when I heard they sent trans people letters because that proves they were making a list. We've been hearing threats about lists of trans people from various government entities, but this confirms that not only are they making lists, they're using them. Kansas is doing some of the most Nazilike that any state has done to trans people and getting away with it, which opens up the floodgates for other states like never before. We've seen that with states that got inspired by Kansas or did the hold my beer thing. Missouri and New Hampshire proposed bathroom bans.

[00:01:53]Idaho passed a felony bathroom ban.

[00:01:55]Mississippi and Wyoming passed driver's license bans. Indiana said they're making a list of trans people so they can pass a driver's license ban.

[00:02:02]Tennessee passed a bill that would create a public list of trans people.

[00:02:06]Ohio has proposed a ban on Medicaid coverage for adult trans people's gender affirming healthcare. And Kentucky tried to ban trans people from being teachers, but thankfully that failed. And on that note, there has been push back in the wake of Kansas, too. Lawsuits, protests, some states solidifying their protections for trans people, mutual aid groups evacuating trans people out of unsafe states. But is that enough?

[00:02:27]Especially under the MAGA regime where there's so much transphobia at the federal level, too. I don't know, y'all.

[00:02:33]What I do know is that this transphobic hate campaign and the escalation of it thanks to Kansas should concern all of us a whole lot more.