Post updated at 5:34 p.m. Tuesday, March 10:

A Douglas County judge on Tuesday denied plaintiffs’ request to temporarily halt an anti-transgender law in Kansas from taking effect while a lawsuit against the state plays out.

As a result, the state will continue to invalidate Kansas driver’s licenses and birth certificates for people who have changed their gender markers, while criminalizing trans people who use bathrooms that align with their gender identity over bathrooms that align with their sex assigned at birth in public buildings. 

The American Civil Liberties Union and Ballard Spahr LLP filed the case on behalf of two trans men in Lawrence in February. 

The men, who are going by the pseudonyms Daniel Doe and Matthew Moe, both go to school or work in public buildings and are affected by the loss of their driver’s licenses. They are arguing that the anti-trans bill is unconstitutional and that it violates their rights to due process, personal autonomy, equality and free expression.

More transgender people in Lawrence have already been navigating the impact of the legislation on their access to bathrooms and driver’s licenses.

Judge James McCabria held a hearing Friday, March 6, to make his decision about a temporary restraining order, which would have suspended enforcement of Senate Bill 244 while he hears the case against the state of Kansas challenging the new legislation.

McCabria wrote that he denied the request because attorneys for the plaintiffs have not yet managed to show that their clients are experiencing immediate and irreparable harm, or that their constitutional rights would be violated in every possible scenario under the bill, which is required for a temporary restraining order.

He also denied the request because he wasn’t confident that the plaintiffs could win the case on any one of their complaints, including that their rights due process, personal autonomy, information privacy, equality under the law or free expression were violated. This is also a necessary stepping stone to win a temporary restraining order.

Plaintiffs also argued that the law used a “gut and go” or “logrolling approach,” where two separate issues are combined under one bill title to help push through unpopular legislation. The Kansas Constitution prohibits this type of legislation.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach had argued that the two topics of SB 244 — gender markers on state credentials and bathrooms in public buildings — were unified because they were both about biological sex. 

“Without more complete understanding and examination of the legislative process and history by which this Act came to exist, the Court has no means to determine this claim on such limited basis,” McCabria wrote.

He also wrote that Kobach argued the bill protects Kansans’ privacy, but didn’t provide concrete examples. Likewise, he wrote that the plaintiffs did not provide examples of harmful encounters they’ve experienced since the bill passed.

“Each side tells the Court ‘harm will happen’ to their side no matter what the Court does,” McCabria wrote. “But the Court cannot fairly analyze important concepts like injury to personal autonomy, informational privacy or equality under the law (or even determine whether they apply) without examining well-developed factual scenarios that have been subjected to challenge and debate.”

McCabria’s denial of the restraining order does not constitute a ruling on the case as a whole.

“Each side will have ample opportunity to buttress these issues — and all issues — in the coming weeks. But, as it stands, the evidence does not support the requested relief,” McCabria wrote. 

“This is a devastating, but hopefully temporary, setback for our clients and transgender people across the state of Kansas,” Harper Seldin said in a statement from the ACLU. Seldin is a lawyer for the plaintiffs who made arguments before McCabria on Friday. 

“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,” Seldin continued. “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.”

Kobach appeared in the packed courtroom Friday to defend the law and ask the judge to deny the injunction. Attorneys for the Kansas Department of Revenue and Department of Administration both said, however, that they could see a benefit to pausing the law for a month so they could determine how to implement it.

By the end of the hearing, Kobach said the state would not penalize government agencies struggling to comply with the bathroom provisions in the bill until Thursday, March 26, a month after it took effect. Similarly, he said “we will ask KDOR to refrain from changing any more records” until the same date. McCabria’s decision did not address that.

The decision directs the plaintiffs and defendants to appear for a case management conference at 9 a.m. Wednesday, March 18, though that date is tentative. 

Read more about SB 244, the effects it’s already had, the lawsuit and more in the articles linked below and at this link.

Here’s the judge’s decision:

20260310-Memorandum-Decision

Wulfe Wulfemeyer (they/them), reporter and news editor, has worked with The Lawrence Times since May 2025. They can be reached at wulfe@lawrencekstimes.com.

Read their complete bio here. Read their work for the Times here.

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