Kansas Trans Guys Are Using Women’s Bathrooms, as Legally Required, as a Form of Protest

Not all heroes wear capes. Some just use the bathroom. A group of transgender men who call themselves the “compliance crew” have been using women’s bathrooms in protest of a Kansas law that mandates that they do so.The new law, Senate Bill 244, went into effect in February of this year, after the state legislature successfully overrode Democratic governor Laura Kelly’s veto on February 13, and requires all people to use sex-separated facilities in government-owned properties that correspond with their assigned sex at birth, effectively banning trans people from the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity. The law also incentivizes everyday people to call the police and sue for damages up to $1,000 if they believe they’ve shared the bathroom with a trans person violating it. According to the ACLU of Kansas, this extends to restrooms and locker rooms, with an additional provision that prohibits trans people from updating their driver’s licenses and state IDs to reflect their gender. The wide-ranging law caused panic when it went into effect earlier this year, as it also invalidated licenses that had gender markers that do not correspond with someone’s assigned sex at birth.Naturally, as with other anti-trans laws across the country, it is already causing confusion around enforcement, as a trans woman was charged in June for presenting a police officer with a driver’s license that contained a male sex marker, which the new law mandates, though the charges have since been dropped. But if it’s confusion they want, it’s confusion the “compliance crew” seems ready to create. The group was created by a transgender man named Charles Osman immediately after the law went into effect. Per KCUR, the local NPR affiliate for Kansas City, the compliance crew began going into public women’s restrooms, in a form of protest known as malicious compliance, which involves following a law to its exact phrasing rather than the way it might have been i