A Gender Mandate: The process used to pass Senate Bill 244 was unethical and led to a poorly developed bill

Sound the alarms! We have an emergency on our hands! It's not the homelessness crisis, the nonexistent job market or skyrocketing health care costs — it’s making sure people use the “right” bathroom. Because, of course, ensuring that people use the bathroom aligning with their birth sex is the threat Kansans want their elected officials spending their valuable time on. 

The Kansas legislature passed the “Bathroom Bill” — Senate Bill 244 — on Feb. 18, overriding Governor Laura Kelly’s veto. The bill requires people in government buildings, like public schools and universities, to use the bathroom that matches their biological sex at birth and to use their birth gender on their driver’s licenses and birth certificates. 

SB 244 initially didn't even have anything to do with gender identification. The original bill was about investment bonds. The Senate expedited the “Bathroom Bill” through a “gut-and-go” procedure, taking the pre-existing bonds bill that they had already passed, gutting its original content and replacing it with the completely unrelated law on gender identification and bathroom usage. This allowed the Senate to move on without ever holding a hearing on the bill or listening to public feedback.

Congress’s decision to pass SB 244 using this “gut-and-go” method was unethical and led to a poorly developed bill, with a lack of attention to costs, grace periods and basic implementation. 

After the Senate, the House of Representatives passed the bill with emergency final action, eliminating waiting periods and allowing little time for public comment and floor debate. This procedure can be necessary when there’s an emergency and legislation needs to be passed quickly. But in what world does the place where someone goes number one and two fall into the crisis category?

Imagine if a teacher completely changed the topic and content of a test five minutes before class and stated that it just had to happen; it would be entirely unreasonable, just like the “gut-and-go” method.

By using the emergency final action method, the politicians completely evaded any public comment, and if the bill was so necessary, there should’ve been no reason to fear public feedback. Not only that, but the sneaky process also only allowed four Democratic opponents to debate the bill in the House before a motion was made to stop the debate and force an immediate vote. 

Just because the Republicans have a majority in the House and the Senate doesn’t mean they should purposefully use an unnecessary process to prevent Democrats from having time to discuss a bill. It sets a dangerous precedent of politicians using loopholes to essentially ignore their counterparts instead of acting like the adults they are and collaborating. 

Debates and public feedback are critical to well-designed bills because they point out flaws in the bills’ wording or implementation to perfect them before they are passed. But SB 244’s process was rushed past this stage of refinement, and Kansans deserve better than just a half-baked bill.

The lack of attention to detail and the unethical process of SB 244 led to some gaping holes in the bill's implementation. For one, there is no fiscal note — a formal notice provided by budget analysts and researchers about how much a bill will cost — for the bathroom provision. This makes it very unclear how much public institutions could have to pay to ensure compliance and have proper enforcement.

If a student wants to use one of the gender neutral bathrooms, would they be liable to face the $1000 fine since it technically doesn’t align with their birth gender? Would someone at SM East or in the Shawnee Mission School District be in charge of enforcing this bill in the building? There are so many unanswered questions that are critical to proper implementation. 

Due to the vague and poorly written nature of the bill, according to Olivia Taylor-Puckett, spokeswoman for Gov. Laura Kelly, the Kansas Department of Administration will issue guidance as logistics, administrative processes and costs are evaluated. But all of these things should have been discussed on the Senate and House floors. Politicians shouldn’t just vote for bills and then figure out their key components later, no matter what the bill is. 

The lack of time spent on the bill also led to issues like no grace periods for the driver's license portion, meaning that as soon as the bill became law, any licenses with a gender label that didn’t align with the driver’s birth gender were declared invalid. The penalties could depend on other factors like the number of prior offenses, but can include fines and/or jail time, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

So not only was the bill rushed with no forewarning, but the implementation was also rushed, ruining any chance of a transition that gave people time to adapt. 

If House and Senate Republicans truly believed this bill was the right course of action, they should have followed proper channels. They could’ve allowed the merits of the bill to stand on their own and given their constituents a genuine voice. Instead, they chose to avoid transparency and collaboration, leaving Kansans to deal with a poorly crafted bill. 

It’s a disservice to democracy when decisions are made behind closed doors, ignoring the very people who are most affected.