Kansas is unsafe for trans people. Is it time to flee? Experts weigh in | Opinion
Kansans really should be ashamed of lawmakers for their recent actions targeting transgender people — and worse, putting what some have said amounts to a bounty on innocent people they don’t like because they don’t understand their circumstances and are too narrow-minded to learn.
Senate Bill 244, which Republican supermajorities in the Kansas Legislature voted last week to enact into law, overriding Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto, went into effect this week, prompting the national political action committee Trans Liberty PAC to issue a formal evacuation alert for transgender residents of Kansas.
It’s the first time a political organization has called on an entire state’s trans population to leave for their safety. But it’s not a first that Kansas should be proud of.
Specifically, the new law invalidates transgender residents’ state identification documents, including drivers licenses, that include gender identification other than what they were issued at birth. The new law also requires people in government-owned buildings to use restrooms and other multi-occupancy private spaces that correspond with their sex assigned at birth.
So, what they are saying is that Kansas lawmakers now want trans women to be forced to use the men’s room, and trans men walking into the women’s bathroom. Who is that protecting? No one. But without a doubt, the law makes it unsafe for transgender people to live, work and just be, in the state of Kansas.
Given the political harassment that’s been mounting against the transgender population in Kansas over the last few years, some in the state are beyond fed up and, frankly, ready to leave.
“The research and data already show the disparities trans people face — particularly trans people of color and those living in rural areas,” said Merrique Jenson, a Kansas City-based trans community leader. “We know the rates of unemployment. We know the rates of housing instability and homelessness. We know the heightened risk of violence and sexual violence. For many people, ‘evacuation’ is a hope.”
Jenson, founder of Transformations and a national spokesperson on trans issues, said that escaping red states like Kansas is definitely a reality for people.
“There are trans people who have been navigating relocation for a long time. In our region in particular, we are already ‘the great trans migration,’ — trans people moving to liberal coastal states or to blue cities that have stronger protections and dignity for us. This did not start yesterday.”
But it does seem to go against historical Kansas — an anti-slavery free state — after years of violent conflict proudly earning the state nickname, Bleeding Kansas.
“Kansas is no stranger to the fight for equality,” said Samantha Boucher, founder of Trans Liberty PAC. “It’s the state where America once bled over the ideal that all Americans are entitled to liberty. Today, Kansas has passed a law shredding that sacred contract. It will void the legal identity documents of every trans person in the state.”
Boucher added: “There is something deeply wrong with a government that offers its people a bounty to hunt their neighbors. Something deeply wrong with a government that erases its own citizens’ legal identities. And there’s nothing American about making it a crime to exist in public.”
It’s simply cruel for the sake of being cruel and worse, in so many words, it puts a bounty on trans individuals by opening the door to lawsuits to be filed by people who believe they have shared a bathroom with a transgender person. A plaintiff can seek damages of at least $1,000.
Who makes that gender determination and how? Do we have people in bathrooms now peeking under the stalls? Who qualifies as, and who wants to be, the gender-checking police? It sounds ridiculous because it is. I’m hoping that it’s too ridiculous actually to disrupt people’s lives much.
“Kansas is the 21st state to restrict transgender people’s access to restrooms, but it’s the first to enact criminal enforcement, a private bounty mechanism, and retroactive ID invalidation,” Trans Liberty said in a statement on Thursday.
The PAC used national population data to estimate that 20,000 to 50,000 transgender people live in Kansas.
At a time when violence against transgender individuals has continued increasing in the Kansas City region and across the country, this is a dangerous action that puts politics over people. It’s certainly not improving the quality of life for Kansas residents, which is what I suspect most Kansas voters elected their lawmakers to do.
Kansas legislators can’t possibly actually care that much about where people pee. They are using trans people as a distraction while their fellow Republicans in Washington are connected to the late Jeffrey Epstein, indicted in 2019 for sex trafficking minors, and the Trump administration reveals levels of racism and dishonesty not seen coming out of the White House in recent decades.
We know trans people have been the target of violence in the Kansas City region.
In 2019, two former Kansas City police officers assaulted Brianna Hill, a transgender woman. Hill was later shot and killed in a different encounter. At the time of her death, according to the Human Rights Campaign, she was the third documented trans woman murdered in Kansas City in 2019.
In 2023, Amber Minor, a 40-year-old transgender woman was killed in Raytown.
While Kansas City did pass a safe haven resolution protecting gender-affirming health care, members of the area’s trans community have been pushing for more safety and protections for years. And more should be done.
I can’t begin to speak for the trans community, but what Jenson said in her response to my questions about the PAC’s warning made a lot of sense to me:
“What we need right now is not a public panic plan,” Jenson said. “Trans people, particularly trans women of color, have long been pioneers in surviving hostile environments. We know how to find community when none exists. We know how to reach out to our sisters. We know how to build networks of care through word of mouth, mutual aid, and trust.”
She said, “Trans people need to talk to other trans folks and strengthen networks and avoid isolation.” I do know there is strength and safety in numbers.