Kansas lawmakers have voted 84-40 in the House and 28-12 in the Senate to override a veto by Gov. Laura Kelly and adopt the “Women’s Bill of Rights,” which gives women significant new protections.
“This is common sense legislation by Kansas lawmakers that dispenses with the false, unscientific idea that people can change their gender,” explained Mat Staver, the founder and chief of Liberty Counsel.
“This ‘Women’s Bill of Rights’ protects the privacy and safety of men and women. Biology is fixed at birth and enacting laws based on fact not fiction is what every state should be doing,” he said.
The plan legally defines “male” and “female” based on a person’s anatomy at birth, and requires that Kansans “must use public restrooms that correspond to their biological sex,” the report said.
“The Kansas law differs from other states’ bathroom protections by actually defining ‘man’ and ‘woman.’ The bill biologically defines the word ‘woman’ as a ‘human female,’ and goes further stating ‘female means an individual whose biological reproductive system is developed to produce ova [a female egg],” Liberty Counsel said.
It applies protections for women in the state’s “restrooms, locker rooms, prisons, domestic violence shelters, and rape crisis centers” and “other areas.”
Further, it forbids government officials from calling biological men women, or vice versa.
The Liberty Counsel report said, “Supporters of the bill say its enactment is a direct response to people’s concerns about people uncomfortably sharing bathrooms, locker rooms and other spaces with people who are clearly the opposite biological sex.”
“We want to have safety,” said Kansas House Health Committee chief Brenda Landwehr. “This will protect women’s spaces currently reserved for women and men’s spaces [also].”
Essentially, the new requirements forbid officials and executives, even judges, “from unilaterally redefining the word ‘woman’ to mean anyone who ‘identifies as a woman.’”
“Today is a huge win for Kansas women! I applaud the legislature for their leadership and commitment to protecting the sex-based rights of women,” explained Riley Gaines, a 12-time All-American swimmer who was force to compete again Lia Thomas, a man who identifies as a woman and was allowed to compete on a women’s swim team.
“As a woman and a female athlete, I can attest firsthand to the importance of women having private spaces when safety and fairness are at risk. Now that the ‘Women’s Bill of Rights’ will be Kansas law, women have clarity that when they enter a space labeled for ‘women’, biological men will not be inside,” she said.
The report said legal precedent is on the side of the state, as virtually anything that limits the LGBT agenda today gets sued.
In a related fight, out of Florida, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said policies based on biology do not violate the Constitution.
This article was originally published by the WND News Center.
This post originally appeared on WND News Center.