Wasinger didn’t answer BuzzFeed News’ questions about potential genital inspections, but said in a statement, “Sports physicals are done for every athlete participating in schools sports. Every child in Kansas must provide a birth certificate to attend school in Kansas. Both should be enough for any student.”
Though proponents of the bill claim such legislation will help promote fair competition among cisgender women and girls, the actual numbers show that transgender female athletes are an extreme minority. According to the Kansas State High School Activities Association, there are currently only three trans girls competing in sports at the high school level.
On Tuesday, Kansas also passed a separate bill, SB 180, which ties together a number of restrictions on how trans people of all ages can move through public spaces, including a ban on transgender people using public restrooms and locker rooms and a prohibition on changing one’s name and gender markers on driver’s licenses.
The bill, which Republicans call the “Women’s Bill of Rights,” defines sex in binary terms as “either male or female, at birth,” and advocates say it would lead to the legal erasure of transgender, gender-nonconforming, and intersex people.
Republicans in the state have more than a two-thirds majority to overturn a veto from Kelly.
Kansas’s sweeping bill is the latest in a number of anti-trans bills that bundle multiple restrictions or have broad definitions of where they can be enforced.
Last week, Kentucky’s Republican-controlled legislature similarly overrode the Democratic governor’s veto of “an omnibus anti-trans bill” that banned gender-affirming care for trans youth, barred them from bathrooms that align with their gender identity, and gave school officials the right to refuse to use students’ pronouns.
Unless blocked by a judge, the Kansas sports ban will go into effect July 1.
