Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly has vetoed a bill banning gender-affirming care for transgender minors.
That could include puberty blockers, hormone treatment or gender-affirming surgeries for transgender youth. Under the bill, doing so could get a doctor sued and cost them their license.
This is just the latest veto fight over gender-affirming care for minors.
Kansas lawmakers have attempted to ban gender-affirming care for years, but each year they couldn’t rally the support to override a veto.
This year is different. The bill passed with what appears to be veto-proof majorities in both chambers. Republicans even have a few votes to spare.
While not a guarantee, the bill could become law and will likely be tangled up in legal battles over its constitutionality.
“Should they be successful in overriding the governor’s veto,” said House Minority Leader Brandon Woodard, a Lenexa Democrat, “(we’ll be) seeing them in court.”
Hodes & Nauser v. State of Kansas
There are similarities between an abortion case from 2017 and potential litigation if the gender-affirming care ban passes.
In 2017, Stephen McAllister stood before the Kansas Supreme Court arguing the state’s constitution granted no right to abortions.
How could it? Abortion was illegal in 1855 and the state constitution didn’t explicitly spell out a right to the procedure. It addressed the right to own a gun, protection from unreasonable searches and prohibitions on soldiers sleeping in your house. But nothing on abortion.
“This court is being asked to do something it has never done before,” said McAllister, then the state’s solicitor general, “to recognize a fundamental personal right under the Kansas Constitution.”
The state would lose that case — Hodes & Nauser v. State of Kansas. The court ruled in 2019 that women had the right to decide what to do with their bodies.
Now in 2025, the Kansas Legislature has once again passed a ban on gender-affirming care for minors. Opponents of the bill say it is unconstitutional. But Republicans who support the ban brush off those claims.
There is no right to gender-affirming care in Kansas and the state can regulate medical care how it wants. But the Hodes case argued in 2017 offers parallels.
McAllister said Hodes is such a fresh legal precedent that it isn’t clear how it could apply to other cases. But its impact can’t be ignored.
“It might be one of, if not the most significant state constitutional decisions in Kansas history,” he said. “It really could be foundational to protecting individual rights.”
In the 2017 Hodes case, the state argued that it has the right to ban health care, including types of abortion practices, as it sees fit. That is the same argument lawmakers are making in 2025 with gender-affirming care for minors.
In 2015, lawmakers said banning a type of abortion procedure protects the unborn. In 2025, lawmakers argue banning gender-affirming care protects children.
Is a gender-affirming care ban legal?
Democrats argued on the House floor that the bill was unconstitutional, but that argument didn’t sway Republicans.
Rep. Ron Bryce, a Coffeyville Republican, carried the bill. He said this is about helping children.
“The real question is whether or not these treatments actually do what they claim and if they do it safely,” he said.
Bryce and other conservatives aren’t convinced the science backs up gender-affirming care. That would allow the Legislature to ban the practice, the same way cigarettes are banned for minors.
D.C. Hiegert, civil liberties fellow with the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas, testified against the bill. They disagree with Bryce’s logic.
Hiegert said gender-affirming care is safe and the only effective form of treatment for transgender Kansans. Banning valid medical practices is clearly unconstitutional, Hiegert said.
One argument for the bill’s unconstitutionality is the 2019 Kansas Supreme Court ruling on abortion. The ruling said that women are allowed to get abortions because it’s their body and they have a right to personal autonomy — even though personal autonomy is never mentioned in the Kansas Constitution.
“The protections under the Kansas Constitution’s Bill of Rights applies to every Kansan,” Hiegert said. “It does not matter whether we’re talking about a transgender Kansan’s right to access health care (or) whether we’re talking about a woman’s right to access health care they need.”
The state constitution has language pulled from the Declaration of Independence. It guarantees everyone has inalienable natural rights that include life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Those rights are the very first line of the Kansas Bill of Rights, which means “preservation of these natural rights is given precedence over the establishment of government,” the 2019 majority opinion said.
But what personal autonomy means is not very clear, said McAllister, the former solicitor general.
Personal autonomy was never in the state constitution, so it was never defined. The right was only expanded during the Hodes decision, and there have not been many legal cases to further define what it means.
Groups are suing to protect voting rights and allow people to change their gender on their driver’s licenses. These lawsuits argue these rights are fundamental, like personal autonomy, and subject to high levels of scrutiny.
That is why Hodes is so important, McAllister said. The current state supreme court could take broad interpretations of personal autonomy and rule that it is constitutionally protected. The court could also disagree and say gender-affirming care isn’t part of it.
“How far does this go? And if you say things like personal dignity or personal autonomy, what exactly does that encompass?” he said.
McAllister, a lawyer who teaches law at the University of Kansas, thinks personal autonomy is broader and should protect a handful of rights. He has even filed written arguments, called amicus briefs, in support of gender changes on driver’s licenses.
He argues that the personal autonomy protection allows people to have whatever gender marker they align with.
The irony isn’t lost on McAllister. He now argues in support of a cause he once opposed.
“I’m pretty much working the other side now,” he said. “Let’s be clear that 2017 was a while ago, and things have changed for me.”
Other concerns about constitutionality
Hiegert said the ACLU’s concerns over the constitutionality of banning gender-affirming care are about more than Hodes.
The bill prohibits promoting social transitioning by state employees who care for children. Social transitioning is many things, but it includes someone using their preferred pronouns. A law telling state employees how they can or can’t talk to people is a violation of free speech, Hiegert said.
The ban on gender-affirming care also applies only to transgender minors, not to intersex children or those with diagnosed illnesses that require hormone treatment to adjust to premature puberty. Hiegert said the law applying to only one group of people violates the equal protection provisions in the U.S. Constitution.
Both of those arguments were made on the House floor. Bryce, who defended the bill during the debate, is convinced that it’s legal.
“If these treatments do not work and there are severe side effects, then what does work?” he asked lawmakers during the debate. “The answer is very simple, and it’s logical. We provide counseling, we treat underlying psychiatric illnesses and we give the children some time.”
The U.S. Supreme Court is also expected to weigh in on this issue. A law from Tennessee is being challenged, but the conservative federal Supreme Court is likely to uphold the ban, one lawyer who spoke with The Beacon said.
Kansas can regulate gender-affirming care
For Brittany Jones, director of policy at Kansas Family Voice, personal autonomy doesn’t extend to this type of health care.
She spoke in support of the ban on gender-affirming care and said the law is legally sound.
Jones said the state has the right to regulate medical care. Nobody in Kansas can get an abortion after 22 weeks. Licensing boards can take away a doctor’s ability to practice. And minors shouldn’t be allowed puberty blockers, hormone treatment or gender-affirming surgery, she argues.
“We do this literally all the time,” she said. “It’s something that’s been affirmed by multiple courts, as well as by the Supreme Court. It’s a very common thing for the state legislature to regulate the practice of medicine.”
Jones also said Hodes hasn’t been used successfully in other cases. The state’s ban on changing gender on someone’s ID has been upheld by a lower court, though it hasn’t gone through the state supreme court.
It isn’t clear how the legal battles over gender-affirming care will play out, but the Kansas Supreme Court has a liberal lean.
This story was originally published by The Beacon, a fellow member of the KC Media Collective.
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