photo by: Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector

Sen. Beverly Gossage, seen during a Jan. 17, 2024, Senate session, defended legislation to ban gender-affirming care for children.

TOPEKA — Senate and House Republicans voted Tuesday to override Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of legislation that bans gender-affirming care for minors, rejecting pleas from Democrats to turn attention instead to issues that concern Kansans.

Republicans used their dominance in both chambers to summon the two-thirds majorities needed to override the veto with votes of 31-9 in the Senate and 84-35 in the House. The unscheduled votes caught Democrats off-guard.

Senate Bill 63 prohibits health care providers from providing surgery, hormones or puberty blockers to children who identify as a gender that is different from the sex they were assigned at birth. Health care providers who break the law will be stripped of their license.

It also prohibits the use of state funds for psychological treatment for transgender children, bans state employees from promoting “social transitioning,” and outlaws liability insurance for damages related to gender-affirming care.

A national anti-LGBTQ+ group called Do Not Harm drafted the model legislation, which is billed as the “Help Not Harm Act.”

In brief debates Tuesday in the House and Senate, Democrats echoed remarks made by the governor when she vetoed the bill earlier this month. The governor directed the Legislature to focus “on ways to help Kansans cope with rising prices.”

House Democrats complained about not being given advance notice that they would debate and vote on the veto. When Rep. Susan Ruiz, a Shawnee Democrat, called the move “cowardly,” she was reprimanded by Rep. Blake Carpenter, a Derby Republican, not to impugn other members of the House.

Ruiz called the bill “egregious and cruel,” and said it wouldn’t help kids or families.

“We should all be enraged about this,” Ruiz said. “This is wrong on so, so many levels. I know certain people don’t care. They don’t care about these kids. All they care about is control — that somehow the Legislature has the right to interfere in people’s bodies.”

Sen. Cindy Holscher, an Overland Park Democrat, referenced testimony from supporters of the bill who described gender-affirming care as a means of “destroying God’s most basic plans.”

“I would contend that millions of people destroy those plans daily,” Holscher said. “Individuals who wear glasses or contacts destroy God’s plan to be vision impaired. Individuals who color their hair or get treatment for baldness destroy God’s plans to be, let’s say, publicly challenged. Males who use forms of erectile dysfunction treatment are destroying God’s plans for them to not be sexually active.”

She drew a comparison between gender dysphoria and children born with a cleft palate, and questioned the ignorance of Sen. Beverly Gossage, a Eudora Republican who championed the bill.

Gossage’s response: “Cleft palate is not a mental disorder. It’s a medical condition.”

Holscher also said the bill “does nothing to address the concerns of Kansans.”

“Our constituents want us to make life more affordable for them,” Holscher said. “This bill does nothing in that regard. It doesn’t make child care more affordable, it doesn’t make wages better, it doesn’t lower property taxes or make health care more affordable. This bill just divides and distracts.”

Sen. David Haley, who supported the attack on trans kids when the Senate passed the bill last month, hemmed and hawed about his override vote until Senate President Ty Masterson, an Andover Republican, ordered him to make a decision. Haley pleaded for more time than the rules allow to explain his vote.

“You will cast your vote or you will shut your mic off,” Masterson said.

Haley joined the other Democrats in the failed attempt to sustain the governor’s veto, while all 31 Republicans supported the attack on transgender children.