Kansas bills hope to fine trans people $2,500 a time for using ‘wrong’ bathroom
Yet more bills hoping to pass in the US aim to limit the rights of transgender people – this time in Kansas.
Two bills, identical, aim to restrict which bathrooms transgender people, and have been introduced simultaneously in the Kansas House and Senate.
Named Senate Bill 513 and House Bill 2737, the legislation are known as “the student physical privacy act”.
According to the bills, they aim to “protect the dignity, health and welfare” of students in public schools.
However, naturally, trans rights advocates have shot down the facade that somehow non-transgender students need protecting from their trans classmates.
Lyn Barnett, the mother of a trans college student, and who is a social worker said the bills would “legislate hate and bigotry.”
She added: “Our trans kids right now are nine to 10 times more likely to commit suicide. This bill would just make it worse… They have nowhere that they fit. They have nowhere where they belong.”
Shawnee County Senator Mary Pilcher-Cook claims that transgender people make other students feel “uncomfortable”.
The Senator, who introduced bill 513, told KCTV5: “Parents have reached out in fear of their children’s safety. They do not want attention for fear of being called a bigot or their children being ostracised.”
Senator Mary Pilcher-Cook
The bill would mean trans people using a bathroom not corresponding to their birth sex and chromosomes, as defined by the bill, would be able to be sued.
Per instance, trans people could be fined $2,500.
Also in Kansas, human rights groups are urging the Governor of Kansas not to sign a ‘religious freedom’ bill passed in the state which would force educational bodies to fund groups which discriminate against LGBT people.
The Kansas SB 175, would force public universities to fund organisations by students which stop LGBT people from joining.
