Kansas lawmakers said their new bathroom restrictions were about keeping men out of women’s spaces. Transgender men in the state are now demonstrating one rather glaring problem with that promise: the law can require men to enter women’s restrooms.
Members of the Kansas Compliance Crew, a group of transgender and transmasculine residents, have been deliberately following Senate Bill 244 by using public facilities corresponding with their sex assigned at birth. On Aug. 8, that compliance reportedly resulted in police being called after three transgender men entered a women’s restroom and changing area at Long Branch Lagoon Water Park in Dodge City.
According to reports, the three described themselves as “bearded, burly men.” The facility manager reportedly hurried children out of the area before law enforcement arrived. The protesters said they ultimately had to explain intimate details about their bodies to officers to establish that they were, in fact, using the restroom Kansas law told them to use.
Compliance Becomes the Protest
SB 244 requires people in certain government-owned buildings to use multi-occupancy restrooms and similar facilities based on sex as defined under Kansas law rather than gender identity. The law also invalidated state identification documents for transgender residents whose gender markers differ from their sex assigned at birth. More than 1,000 Kansans were affected by the ID provisions when the law took effect in February.
The Compliance Crew has taken the state at its word.
Wearing yellow shirts identifying the group, members reportedly visited women’s facilities at libraries, parks, museums, a zoo, and other public locations. Most encounters were uneventful. The Dodge City incident, however, demonstrated exactly the contradiction activists hoped to expose.
Ray Vieux, one of the transgender men participating, said he ordinarily blends into men’s spaces without attracting attention. Under SB 244, however, he said complying with the law can force him to choose between personal safety and following the rules.
A Law Facing a Legal Challenge
The bathroom provisions are already being challenged in court.
Two transgender men from Lawrence filed suit against Kansas earlier this year, arguing that SB 244 violates protections under the Kansas Constitution, including rights involving privacy, personal autonomy, due process, and equal treatment. A Douglas County judge denied an initial request to temporarily block the law in March.
The law also contains a private enforcement provision allowing someone to sue a person suspected of violating the restroom restrictions, with damages of at least $1,000.
Meanwhile, the Compliance Crew’s protest has turned the debate from an abstract political talking point into something considerably harder to ignore.
Kansas wanted transgender people to use bathrooms according to birth sex. Transgender men complied.
Then someone called the police.
That may be the clearest demonstration yet of who these laws actually make safer.
