Story at a glance
- Kansas’ Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly on Friday vetoed two bills which have been previously criticized for targeting members of the LGBTQ+ community.
- One of the bills would have barred transgender women and girls from competing on school sports teams aligning with their gender identity, and the other would have created a “Parental Bill of Rights” allowing parents to challenge learning materials inconsistent with their personal beliefs.
- State GOP leadership in the legislature has pledged to seek overrides for both bills once the session resumes April 25.
Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly (D) on Friday vetoed a pair of bills condemned by LGBTQ+ advocates as discriminatory against LGBTQ+ people in the state. One of them, a transgender athlete ban, would have barred trans women and girls from competing on sports teams that match their gender identity. The other would have established a “Parental Bill of Rights,” granting public school parents the ability to review and challenge classroom materials inconsistent with their personal beliefs.
Under the first bill, or the “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act,” public school sports teams from the elementary to the university level would be designated by “biological sex,” or a student’s sex assigned at birth.
“Athletic teams or sports designated for females, women or girls shall not be open to students of the male sex,” the bill reads, using language identical to last session’s Senate Bill 55 that was also vetoed by Kelly.
“We all want a fair and safe place for our kids to play and compete,” Kelly wrote Friday in a veto message. “However, this bill didn’t come from the experts at our schools, our athletes, or the Kansas State High School Activities Association. It came from politicians trying to score political points.”
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Similar to legislation recently passed in Kentucky, the Kansas bill by including collegiate athletics likely runs afoul of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) rules, potentially threatening state universities’ participation in NCAA sports and championship events.
Attempts to bar transgender people from athletics have been thwarted in Idaho and West Virginia, and lawsuits are pending against similar bans in Tennessee and Florida.
But many have argued that such legislation is needed to “protect” the integrity of women’s sports, particularly as transgender athletes like the University of Pennsylvania’s Lia Thomas allegedly edge cisgender women out of competitive athletic opportunities.
After Kentucky state legislators voted to override the governor’s veto on the state’s own transgender athlete ban, University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines, who tied with Thomas for a fifth place NCAA title in March, accused the athletic assocation of failing to protect cisgender women like herself, adding that “biological males should not be competing against women.”
On Friday, Kansas Republicans nodded in agreement.
“Men should not be competing in women’s sports,” Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt — one of a handful of Republicans seeking to challenge Kelly for the governor’s office this year — tweeted after the veto. “Governor Kelly today vetoed (for the second time) a bill to implement that commonsense principle. I would have signed the bill into law.”
Kelly on Friday also vetoed a bill that would have given parents in the state greater authority to challenge learning materials inconsistent with their “firmly held beliefs, values or principles,” which LGBTQ+ advocates have previously said would likely target topics related to sexual orientation and gender identity.
In a veto message, Kelly said more than 100 parents in Kansas had testified against the bill, arguing such legislation would only fan the flames of division and would likely end up being unnecessarily costly for the state.
“Money that should be spent in the classroom would end up being spent in the courtroom,” the governor wrote Friday. Bills aiming to strengthen the rights of parents in their children’s education have been introduced in at least seven other states.
State GOP leadership in the legislature has pledged to seek overrides for both bills once the session resumes April 25.
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