In addition to the driver’s license provisions, the law bans transgender people from using bathrooms matching their gender identity in public buildings and creates a bathroom bounty hunter system allowing citizens to sue transgender people they encounter in restrooms for at least $1,000 in damages, including potentially in private restrooms. The bill takes effect immediately upon publication in the Kansas Register rather than the standard July 1 effective date—giving transgender Kansans just days between the override and the invalidation of their identity documents.
The consequences for noncompliance could escalate quickly. Under Kansas law, driving without a valid license is a class B misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine—though first-time offenders are more likely to face a citation and fine. A conviction, however, triggers an automatic 90-day license suspension. If a person drives during that suspension, they face a charge of driving on a suspended license, which carries a mandatory minimum of five days in jail. Kansas already requires county jails to house inmates by sex assigned at birth.
The benefits are primarily political. Wealthy reactionary donors reward elected officials with more money. Church groups reward state legislators with votes. Fascist vigilantes reward the government with cheap snitching.
There’s a whole book on it.
What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America
At the same time, these laws have created their own kind of blowback. As the conservatives pivot to appease an extremist minority, they’ve shed their populist mandate and needed to lean harder and harder on gerrymandering, misinformation, and terror campaigns to keep control.
Kansas is fucking weird because they do shit like this but also voted to make abortion a constitutional right in the state.
Most states are like that. I don’t think there’s any true red states if you eliminated the vote manipulation
Texas would be blue without their rampant voter suppression.
The governor vetoed the bill and then the legislature overrode it.
This is entirely due to gerrymandering of state legislative seats. A savvy liberal party would organize a constitutional amendment to protect civil rights and put that on the ballot in November.
They’d get the Ohio treatment then. Partisan gerrymandering is constitutionally illegal in ohio, and when the state supreme court struck down a partisan map the state congress kept presenting the same one until it was too late. No punishment.