Kansas senator pushes for federal anti-trans bills after efforts in state fail
In a small room in the Capitol Visitors Center, Sen. Roger Marshall sat at a table with conservative lawmakers and anti-transgender advocates and teased his new plan.
In the coming weeks, Marshall said, he’d be introducing a Senate bill that would try to prevent gender-affirming care by going after the doctors, nurses and mental health professionals who provide it with fines of up to $100,000.
It’s just one pillar of Marshall’s sweeping agenda to restrict the rights of transgender Americans, specifically transgender youth.
Marshall and his fellow conservatives are entering the new Congress hoping to impose a federal ban on gender-affirming care for minors, keep transgender women from participating in women’s sports leagues and restrict transgender people from single-sex spaces like bathrooms and locker rooms.
The agenda will be difficult to pass, because Marshall will likely need the support of Democrats. But if he’s succeeds, it would alter the gender-affirming care landscape in Kansas, where Republicans have been unable to pass a law banning transgender care for minors, stymied by Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly.
“So goes Washington, then goes the rest of the nation,” said Sarah Parshall Perry, a legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, who supports restrictions on gender-affirming care. “We’re doing what we can in the statehouses, but this chamber, this body, has a chance for real courage, conviction and action.”
The push comes as conservatives across the country spent the past year making trans issues a key component of their political campaigns. Framing the issue as “women’s rights,” Republicans criticized Democratic candidates for being willing to allow trans women to participate in women’s sports leagues and for allowing minors to access gender-affirming care.
In Missouri, Sen. Josh Hawley featured several ads focused on trans issues on his way to a 14 percentage point defeat of Democrat Lucas Kunce – using the issue to portray Kunce as too liberal for Missouri.
Bolstered by the success of those campaigns, conservatives like Marshall are entering the new Congress optimistic that they may be able to pass legislation that has repeatedly fallen flat in the Democrat-controlled Senate over the past four years.
And while Marshall recognized that it may still be a challenge to pass his sweeping agenda, it opens up a new front in the effort to restrict gender-affirming care in Kansas.
“I think it definitely makes it harder at a state level when you have these national groups pushing for this,” said Taryn Jones, a lobbyist for Equality Kansas. “Having it at the national level definitely gets more attention, I think than at the state level, so I definitely think it creates a more uphill battle for us.”
Kansas legislature move
For two years, Jones and other LGBTQ advocates have attempted to defeat legislation by conservative lawmakers seeking to restrict trans rights in Kansas.
In 2023, the Legislature pushed four bills aimed at the trans community in Kansas, including bills to limit trans Kansans’ access to single-sex spaces and prevent trans athletes from participating in youth sports leagues that match their gender identity.
Lawmakers were able to pass three of those bills over the objection of Kelly, who vetoed the legislation. But they didn’t have enough votes to override Kelly’s veto of the bill that would ban gender-affirming care for minors.
Gender-affirming care medical treatment that accepts a patient’s transgender identity and sometimes helps to make their body align to that image. It can be limited to counseling services or could include medications or surgery.
A year later, they again tried to ban gender-affirming care for minors. The legislation would have targeted medical professionals who offer the services, allowing families to sue those providers and setting up a pathway to revoke their medical licenses.
Once again, Kelly vetoed the legislation. And again, Republicans failed to secure the two-thirds majority necessary to override the veto.
Despite the two failed efforts, conservatives have pledged to take up the issue again next year, this time with a larger Republican supermajority.
“It’s definitely going to be more difficult with an expanded supermajority, but I don’t think that it’s impossible,” Jones said. “I mean, the whole reason we’ve been able to hold this bill off is because of Republicans who don’t want to see this.”
Marshall’s efforts challenged
Marshall, an OB/GYN, has been supportive of the Kansas Legislature’s effort to restrict gender-affirming care. But he’s seen even less success as he’s attempted to pass federal legislation that would enforce similar restrictions across the country.
Over the past four years, Marshall has sponsored or co-sponsored several bills related to trans issues.
He’s pushed legislation that would make it a criminal offense for healthcare providers to offer gender transition medication or surgery and has sought to eliminate federal funding from medical offices that provide gender-affirming care.
He supported bills to prevent trans women from participating in college sports, to force schools to get parental consent before changing a child’s gender markers and to create a “Women’s Bill of Rights” that would prevent trans women from accessing single-sex spaces.
None of those bills have gained traction in a Senate controlled by Democrats.
But as Republicans are set to control Congress next year, Marshall thinks his legislation will have more of a shot. As Democrats assessed what went wrong in November’s election, some put the blame on the party’s support for trans rights, saying it made candidates look out of touch with the electorate.
Any attempt to limit gender-affirming care or to prevent trans women from single-sex spaces and sports leagues would likely require 60 votes to pass the Senate. Marshall said he believed all 53 Republicans would support his legislation. The challenge, he said, would be finding seven Democrats.
“This is the right thing to do,” Marshall said. “History will look back at this 200 years from now and say can you believe that America was doing this for a while. Think about the gladiators from 1,000 years ago, it’s that type of a historical moment and it’s our job to stand up to do the right thing.”
But legislation that attempts to fine or criminalize healthcare professionals following the guidelines of the major medical associations – like the American Psychiatric Association, the American Medical Society and the American Academy of Pediatrics – may have a difficult time making it through Congress.
Kathryn Tolle, a psychologist in Manhattan who sees trans and nonbinary patients, said medical professionals are just trying to help their patients get the help they need to lead healthy lives.
“It’s care I’ve been trained to provide and it’s care that is in line with the latest research and the latest recommendations from the American Psychological Association,” Tolle said. “So to be fined for doing responsible work is, in my opinion, like not a good move and also not helpful to anybody.”
Legal battles ahead
While Kansas’ efforts to ban gender-affirming care for minors, at least 26 states have passed some form of ban on the treatment, according to the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ advocacy organization.
Those bans are currently being challenged in both federal and state courts. While a Missouri judge upheld the state’s gender-affirming care ban earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a challenge in December arguing that bans in Tennessee and Kentucky violate the constitution’s equal protection clause.
But the case is only focusing on access to gender-affirming care, not some of the other issues Marshall has targeted, like his efforts to restrict trans athletes from collegiate sports and single-sex spaces.
The issue has even become a flashpoint in Congress. House Speaker Mike Johnson last week announced a rule that trans people won’t be allowed to access single-sex bathrooms in the Capitol complex – a rule many saw as targeted at the country’s first trans lawmaker, incoming Democratic Rep. Sarah McBride, from Delaware.
Marshall’s press conference came the same day as Johnson’s order. As he sat at a long table in front of several posters decrying the “gender industrial complex,” Marshall cited his history as an OB/GYN, when saying doctors shouldn’t be offering gender-affirming treatment.
But Jones, the pro-LGBTQ lobbyist, said Marshall’s medical background doesn’t make him an expert on trans issues.
“Delivering babies doesn’t qualify you as an expert on gender-affirming care or on anomalies like intersex,” Jones said. “And so it’s really frustrating to see him get up there and act like he’s an expert on something when that’s not what his field was in.”
This story was originally published December 2, 2024 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Kansas senator pushes for federal anti-trans bills after efforts in state fail."
