Kansas Legislature Week 6: legislators target trans youth, medical marijuana, the state budget, and more! 🚨
Video Script
Intro
I’m Davis Hammet with Loud Light. Here’s what happened week 6 in the Kansas Statehouse. While much of the state shut down due to record breaking subzero temperatures and snow storms, the Legislature was unrelenting as they crossed the midpoint of the 2025 Kansas legislative session.
Trans Health / Foster Care / Pronoun Ban (SB63 , SB76, HB2311)
After failing in previous years, the expanded Republican supermajority had enough votes to override Gov. Kelly’s veto of the gender affirming care ban for Kansas youth. The new law went into effect on Thursday. In response, local organizations partnered with the Campaign for Southern Equality to expand an emergency medical assistance program into Kansas. The Trans Youth Emergency Project assists Kansas families of trans youth to find and access out-of-state healthcare. The Legislature went further in their push to target transgender Kansans. The Senate passed a bill to ban the use of names and pronouns that are not on a student’s birth certificate, and the House passed a bill to ban state adoption and foster agencies from protecting LGBTQ youth. The House bill mandates the state must consider prospective parents regardless of if they hold extremist and potentially abusive beliefs on sexual orientation and gender identity, such as supporting forced conversion therapy. These 2 bills now head to the opposite chamber for debate.
School Vouchers & Disability Funding (SB87)
The Senate passed a bill this week that would expand a Brownback era experiment that gives tax breaks to people who donate to private school scholarship funds. The bill would allow donors to receive a 75% tax credit, funnelling millions more in tax dollars into unaccredited unregulated private schools. The tax credit expands taxpayer spending on private schools as Republican legislators repeatedly reject efforts to raise special education funding in public schools which they have illegally underfunded to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars since 2011 when Republicans first gained a supermajority in the House.
Medical Marijuana (SB250)
The Senate passed a bill that would allow Kansans with life threatening conditions to seek medical treatments that are not approved by the FDA. Democratic Senators attempted to amend the bill to allow Kansans to seek medical marijuana treatment. In a party-line vote Republicans unanimously blocked medical marijuana again. While Gov. Kelly and democratic legislators support medical marijuana, Republican leaders, specifically Senate President Masterson, have shut down all marijuana proposals. Kansas remains one of only three states in the nation that offers no access to medical marijuana.
State Budget (HB 2007) Budget Explainer
For the first time Republican legislators have written the state budget on their own instead of using the Governor’s proposal as a starting point. Due to the last few rounds of tax cuts, the state is facing revenue shortfalls and now has an unbalanced budget. The Republican budget seeks to address the shortfall by cut spending in a 1.5% across the board budget cut. All together the proposed budget cuts roughly $250 million per year in spending which covers about 2/3rds of the lost state revenue caused by tax cuts passed last Summer. The cuts don’t balance the budget though as it’s still trending toward red and the estimates do not include the costs of more tax cuts which Republican leaders have promised to deliver.
Coming Up (SCR1611)
The legislature is on a short break after debating over a hundred bills this week and will jump back into this unusual breakneck session on Tuesday. There are no signs of things slowing down with tons of hearings scheduled including a proposed constitutional amendment to politicize the court by making Kansas Supreme Court Justices elected partisan politicians instead of selecting them through a nonpartisan merit system. Stay tuned, stay engaged, and until next time, thank you so much Kansas!