The most extreme anti-trans law passed to date, SB 244, which is slated to take effect next Thursday, goes much further than the restrictions that have been adopted in other states, and makes Kansas the first state to implement a bathroom bounty and revoke trans people’s legally-issued IDs.
First and foremost, there’s the bathroom provisions. Under the law, trans people would be legally prohibited from using the bathrooms that correspond to their gender identity in all public buildings. That said, unlike most bathroom laws in other states, SB 244 turns to criminalization as a means of enforcement.
Accordingly, a person’s first violation would result in a written notice and if they violate it for a second time, this escalates to a $1,000 fine. However, from the third violation onwards, the offense is elevated to a class B misdemeanor, which is punishable by up to 6 months in jail and a $1,000 fine. This makes Kansas the fourth state—after Florida, Mississippi, and Utah—to pass a law allowing for trans people to be imprisoned over their bathroom use.
But it gets worse: the next section of the law separately creates a private cause of action against any trans person that uses the ‘wrong’ bathroom. And, as first pointed out by Erin in the Morning, this part is extremely vague: nothing in it limits these lawsuits to the violations that occur in public buildings. Instead, it merely specifies that a person has grounds to sue after encountering a person of the ‘opposite sex’ in a ‘multiple-occupancy private space,’ and as such, it can be interpreted to apply anywhere—even private businesses.
Under SB 244, all birth certificates and IDs that don’t display a person’s sex assigned at birth will be invalidated. And in both cases, those affected by these invalidations will be burdened with replacing their documents. It’s also worth pointing out that driving with an invalid license is a class B misdemeanor in the state.