The woman, who did not use her real name to testify, was put on the stand by Attorney General Kris Kobach and his team of lawyers who are defending a lawsuit brought by transgender Kansans over the new law, SB 244.

The plaintiffs are seeking an injunction from Douglas County Judge James McCabria to temporarily halt enforcement of the law, which was passed in February over Gov. Laura Kelly's veto. They claim that the law, which prohibits them from using public restrooms that don't match their designated sex at birth and which invalidated their driver's licenses over changed gender markers, is unconstitutional.

The woman, who identified herself as a registered Republican from Wichita, said that when she was 19 she worked for a representative at the Capitol. While she was in a bathroom stall there, someone entered the stall next to her who was "quite clearly a man." She said she could see the feet of the person, who was "standing to pee." When she exited her stall to wash her hands, "a man stepped out" of the adjacent stall - and she knew who it was.

"That was Representative Stephanie Byers," she told the court, referring to Kansas' first openly transgender person to serve in the Kansas Legislature.

Though she testified that she knew Byers was transgender and worked in the Capitol, she said the lawmaker's presence was "not something anyone expects to encounter" in the restroom.

Byers, a Wichita Democrat who left office in 2023, did not speak to the woman or interact with her in any way, but she nonetheless felt unsettled, she said.

"It was quite uncomfortable as a female," she told the court, "especially as a younger female," and "not something I'd like to experience again."

The woman recounted a second experience she had at the Capitol last year, when she said she saw Democratic Rep. Abi Boatman, of Wichita, go into a restroom as she was leaving it. She knew Boatman to be a transgender woman just as she had known Byers to be, she testified. She and Boatman were never in the restroom at the same time and did not interact. Still, the woman said, the knowledge that Boatman could go into the bathroom was "unsettling" for her.

When asked why, she said that women's bathrooms were "vulnerable spaces" where, in addition to relieving themselves behind closed stalls, women did private things like breastfeed and "ask each other for tampons." Those activities would "go away," she said, if transgender women like the lawmakers were allowed into that space. A woman would not be able to ask a biological male for a tampon, she said.

"You don't know what's going to happen" in a private space like a bathroom, and it's comforting to know that under SB 244 bathrooms will be places "where everyone has the same genitalia," she said.

The woman's testimony closely paralleled that of Shanna Simpson, the animal curator at the Topeka Zoo who has participated in litigation with Kobach previously regarding Title IX. Simpson testified on Thursday that she never permits her 16-year-old daughter to go into a public bathroom by herself after the girl saw a "man in a dress" in a restaurant bathroom five years ago and was "genuinely upset" by it.

Both women testified that they didn't "dislike" trans people but they felt safer with SB 244 on the books, as did a father who testified Thursday that his daughter said she once saw a transgender middle school classmate enter the girls' restroom and became scared. The man said that although he respected the "human dignity" of the other child, he put his daughter in a private school after that to keep her safe.

The lobbyist did not indicate which state representative she worked for when she was 19, but Rep. Byers' presence in the Statehouse had drawn the ire of conservative legislators, notably Wichita-area Republican Cheryl Helmer, who drew criticism from LGBTQ+ groups when she referred in an email to Byers as "a huge transgender person who is now in our restrooms at the Capitol."

Byers went on to falsely claim, as media outlets across the country reported, that "our wee little girls in elementary and middle and high school are having to be exposed and many have been raped, sodomized and beaten in the restrooms by these supposedly transgenders who may or may not be for real."

An expert for the plaintiffs who specializes in sex-crime prevention testified earlier in the week that sex crimes against women in public restrooms are practically nonexistent. A man donning female clothing in order to assault a woman in a public bathroom is something she had never encountered in her years of sex-crime research, she said.

After the lobbyist testified Friday morning, the state rested its case. Closing arguments are scheduled for next week, and McCabria will render a decision sometime thereafter on the temporary injunction motion.

Earlier in the week the plaintiffs and their experts testified about the harms that SB 244 inflicts on transgender people, while Kobach's team sought to portray SB 244 as causing only "discomfort" and "inconvenience" to transgender people while being beneficial to law enforcement and emergency room doctors.

See previous coverage of this week's hearing below:

Tuesday: Trans plaintiffs challenging state law testify in Douglas County about harms they've suffered

Wednesday: State's anti-trans law harms people while not making anything better, experts testify

Thursday: Kobach's team puts on parents, cops, other witnesses to support Kansas' anti-trans law SB 244