The Kansas state legislature on Tuesday enacted the Help Not Harm Act (SB 63), protecting Kansas minors from gender transition drugs and surgeries over the governor’s veto. The law makes Kansas the 27th state to enact legislation protecting minors from gender transition procedures since 2021, a stunning reversal from what appeared to be the grim outlook confronting children when Family Research Council took up what seemed like a lost cause eight years earlier.

The Help Not Harm Act prevents health care providers from carrying out surgeries or providing drugs “to a female child for the purpose of treatment for distress arising from such female child’s perception that such child’s gender or sex is not female,” and likewise for males. Health care providers who violate this prohibition will have their license revoked and will be liable to the child and his/her parents for “actual and punitive damages” in a civil lawsuit. The law prevents any professional liability insurance policy from covering such damages.

The law separately prohibits the use of state property or funds to provide gender transition procedures to minors. These prohibitions extend to state employees, state Medicaid reimbursements, or any recipient of state funds, such as health care systems that accept Medicaid. The explicit aim of these extra prohibitions is to fortify the state of Kansas against any complicity in providing gender transition procedures to minors should the more direct prohibition get held up in court.

The Kansas Senate initially passed SB 63 on January 29 by a 32-8 vote, with state Senator David Haley (D) joining Republicans in support. The Kansas House passed the bill on January 31 by an 83-35 margin, one vote short of a veto-proof majority with four Republicans absent. This was the first bill to reach the governor’s desk in 2025.

However, Kansas Governor Laura Kelly (D) vetoed the bill on February 11. “Right now, the Legislature should be focused on ways to help Kansans cope with rising prices,” her veto message began. Kelly also accused SB 63 of “infringing on parental rights” and constituting “government interference in Kansans’ private medical decisions.”

This was not the first contest of wills between Kansas’s Republican legislature and Democratic governor over gender transition procedures for minors. Kelly vetoed similar legislation in 2024 and 2023, but the legislature failed to override the veto on both previous attempts.

This time, however, House and Senate leadership were more confident in their ability to override the governor’s veto. Senate President Ty Masterson (R) declared that the Senate would “swiftly override her veto before the ink from her pen is dry,” while House Speaker Dan Hawkins (R) said his chamber was also “ready to override this reckless and senseless veto.”

On Tuesday, the Kansas Senate overrode the veto 31-9, after Haley, the lone Democrat to vote for the measure, declined to oppose the veto from his fellow Democrat. The same day, the Kansas House overrode the veto 85-34, where four Democrats and two Republicans were absent.

In the House, Kansas Reps. Mark Schreiber (R) and Bob Lewis (R) initially voted against the veto override, leaving the rest of the Republican caucus with the bare minimum of two-thirds majority needed to override the veto. Lewis later switched his vote.

The Kansas legislature’s previous override attempts on similar bills, which were unsuccessful, also saw Republican defections. In 2024, Kansas Reps. Jesse Borjon (R) and Susan Concannon (R) initially voted for the Forbidding Abusive Child Transitions Act, but then they voted against the veto override, which fell two votes short of the necessary supermajority.

Concannon had initially filed to run for re-election in April, then withdrew from the race after voting against the veto override. Borjon won re-election by a narrower margin than his previous victory, and this time he chose to vote for SB 63’s veto override.

Schreiber not only voted against SB 63 but spoke against it, exhorting other Republicans to “refrain from using” the term “radical gender ideology” in debate, because “I think it would show some kindness toward those families and those children that have that medical condition [gender dysphoria].”

“When we use that, we kind of imply that this is a choice that these kids have or have made,” he explained. “But you know, ideologies are taught. We’ve taught capitalism, we teach communism, we teach Catholicism — these are all ideologies. But we don’t teach kids to have cancer, we don’t teach them to have birth defects, and we don’t teach them to have a medical condition called gender dysphoria.”

“The choice we can address as a society,” Family Research Council Senior Fellow for Education Studies Meg Kilgannon told The Washington Stand in response, “is what the school does on our behalf to advance ideologies, that morph quickly into socially transitioning children, which often leads to medical treatments. We need to be responsible and discerning about the information we discuss with children, the age at which it is discussed, and who exactly has the responsibility to discuss a particular matter with a child.”

“Too often,” continued Kilgannon, “parents have been separated from their children (emotionally or even custodially) through well-meaning interventions that are not in the best interest of the child but are in the service of an ideology.”

In any event, Schreiber’s lone opposition was insufficient to derail the veto override, after Republicans flipped three Kansas House seats in the November 2024 election, where many down-ballot Republican candidates rode President Donald Trump’s “coattails” to victory.

“Today, a supermajority of the Kansas Senate declared that Kansas is no longer a sanctuary state for the maiming and sterilization of minors,” announced Masterson after the Tuesday vote. “This action is consistent with President Trump’s executive order to stop these barbaric procedures nationwide.”

SB 63 will take effect on July 1 of this year, with a weaning period for minors currently taking puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones to withdraw from such chemical intervention gradually, but “such course of treatment shall not extend beyond December 31, 2025.”

“Most Kansans do not support telling a child he or she is born in the wrong body or that it is possible to change one’s sex,” said Kilgannon. “It’s great to see the legislature reflect these commonsense values.”