News & Commentary

"It was tens of thousands of people in Kansas," Bonds, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas at the time, told USA TODAY. "Obviously, if you multiply that nationally, it could really deprive a bunch of people who are undoubtedly lawfully authorized to vote from being able to cast their ballot."

This movement to restrict student protest is not new, but it has accelerated. The ACLU of Kansas recently detailed how similar attempts to limit speech have already appeared in districts such as Shawnee Mission, where administrators previously tried to suppress speech related to gun violence and even seized student journalists’ recording devices — actions the district later retreated from after legal challenge.

Harper Seldin, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) representing the plaintiffs said that Kansas was singling out trans residents “for unique social stigma”.

An ACLU attorney told Salon that a new law places trans Kansans in an "impossible position"

By the time you read this, those swept up in ICE raids may already be filling some of the 1,000 beds at a troubled for-profit prison in Leavenworth now turned federal detention facility.

A Douglas County District Court judge ruled that the law may be enforced during an ongoing lawsuit by transgender Kansans and the ACLU.

“SB 244 is a cruel and craven threat to public safety all in the name of fostering fear, division, and paranoia,” said Harper Seldin, Senior Staff Attorney for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Rights Project. “The invalidation of state-issued IDs threatens to out transgender people against their will every time they apply for a job, rent an apartment, or interact with police. Taken as a whole, SB 244 is a transparent attempt to deny transgender people autonomy over their own identities and push them out of public life altogether.”

Harper Seldin, senior staff attorney for the ACLU’s LGBTQ and HIV Rights Project, stated, “The harm of this law has already had sweeping impacts on the lives of transgender people like our clients, threatening their ability to hold a job, go to school, or go about their daily lives. We all deserve the freedom to be ourselves without politicians interfering in our lives, and we will keep fighting SB 244 until it is erased from state law entirely.”

"This legislation is a direct attack on the dignity and humanity of transgender Kansans," Monica Bennet, legal director of the ACLU of Kansas, said in a statement. "It undermines our state's strong constitutional protections against government overreach and persecution."