{"id":95541,"date":"2025-10-03T10:11:45","date_gmt":"2025-10-03T16:11:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kcnonline.com\/wp\/?p=95541"},"modified":"2025-10-03T10:11:50","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T16:11:50","slug":"gop-legislators-seek-special-session","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kcnonline.com\/wp\/2025\/10\/03\/gop-legislators-seek-special-session\/","title":{"rendered":"GOP Legislators Seek Special Session"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Sherman Smith, Kansas Reflector<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

TOPEKA \u2014 Republican legislative leaders are urging lawmakers to support their push for a special session where they can both ban Kansans from altering gender markers on their driver\u2019s licenses and redraw congressional maps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Senate President Ty Masterson and House Speaker Dan Hawkins have been trying to garner enough signatures to force a special session in early November, with the goal of gerrymandering U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids, the lone Democrat in the state\u2019s congressional delegation, out of office. But some Republican lawmakers have resisted<\/a> the call to action initiated by President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This week, Republican leaders shifted gears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Kansas Supreme Court on Monday declined to consider Attorney General Kris Kobach\u2019s appeal in a legal fight<\/a> over a 2023 law that attempted to define gender by conflating it with sex. Gender is a a social and personal identity or expression, while sex refers to reproductive systems. Kobach used the law to argue that Kansans shouldn\u2019t be allowed to change the gender markers on their driver\u2019s licenses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the Kansas Court of Appeals determined the state suffered no harm<\/a> from changed gender markers. Kansans have been allowed to modify their driver\u2019s licenses since at least 2002, according to court records. There were just 380 changes from 2011 to 2022, and nobody raised concerns about the practice before Kobach filed his lawsuit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because the high court refused to hear Kobach\u2019s appeal, Kansans can resume changing their gender markers as of Monday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Masterson and Hawkins seized the opportunity to pressure Republicans into supporting their push for a special session.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Masterson, an Andover Republican, sent a letter<\/a> Wednesday to Senate Republicans that said Kobach has urgently requested they call a special session to address an issue that Kobach considers \u201ceven more important than redistricting.\u201d By adding a few words to Senate Bill 180<\/a>, the letter said, the Legislature could \u201cprevent a flood of individuals seeking to change their driver\u2019s licenses.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a statement, Masterson said the Legislature could tackle both gender markers and redistricting in a special session.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t allow a narrow radical ideology the ability to alter basic concrete facts on documents with vital statistics,\u201d Masterson said. \u201cShould a special session be called, we can certainly handle both issues.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rep. Mark Schreiber, an Emporia Republican, said Hawkins sent a similar letter to House Republicans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Schreiber is the rare Republican who votes against anti-trans legislation. He also opposes partisan redistricting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was kind of surprised to have another reason to go into special session,\u201d he said in an interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTo me, I don\u2019t know that it\u2019s worthy of a special session,\u201d he added. \u201cThe thing with special sessions is once we get in there, they can bring up anything. It\u2019s not limited to a topic. So we\u2019ll see how it goes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said he wouldn\u2019t sign the petition to call a special session.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think the purpose of redistricting is to try to ensure a majority in the U.S. House. It\u2019s to make adjustments based on population changes,\u201d Schreiber said. \u201cYou know, I could see this going on and on \u2014 every two or three years, four years, whatever, somebody comes up and says, \u2018Well, we got to save the majority.\u2019 And it could be either Rs or Ds. It doesn\u2019t matter to me. Redistricting is not, in opinion, to be used for that purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Masterson and Hawkins hope to appease the president by drawing four congressional districts that each favor Republicans. In 2022, they attempted to drive Davids out of office by drawing maps that split the Kansas City metro and placed Lawrence into the largely rural 1st District that stretches all the way to the Colorado border. Another attempt would have to carve up Johnson County and place more rural terrain in Davids\u2019 district.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Senate Minority Leader Dinah Sykes said in a statement that the timing of Kobach\u2019s \u201curgent request\u201d to change a law that has been on the books for more than two years \u201cis highly suspicious.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s as though the idea of mid-decade redistricting isn\u2019t generating enough momentum amongst the people of Kansas \u2014 because Kansans aren\u2019t asking for a new map \u2014 so Republicans needed to return to a divisive social issue that they know will drum up outrage,\u201d Sykes said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Masterson\u2019s response: \u201cI\u2019m grateful that Democrats at least acknowledge it\u2019s outrageous, which in itself addresses the question of timing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sykes, a Lenexa Democrat, said \u201cnone of this is about supporting Kansans and their real, immediate concerns about health care, property taxes, and putting increasingly more expensive food on the table.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

House Minority Leader Brandon Woodard, also a Lenexa Democrat, said \u201cthe unbalanced Republican supermajority is abusing their power to call another special session that will cost hundreds of thousands of Kansas tax dollars because the attorney general lost in court on a fabricated issue.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Sherman Smith, Kansas Reflector TOPEKA \u2014 Republican legislative leaders are urging lawmakers to support their push for a special session where they can both ban Kansans from altering gender markers on their driver\u2019s licenses and redraw congressional maps. Senate President Ty Masterson and House Speaker Dan Hawkins have been trying to garner enough signatures […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[5061,244,4868],"class_list":["post-95541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-state","tag-gerrymandering","tag-kansas-legislature","tag-transgenders"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kcnonline.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kcnonline.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kcnonline.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kcnonline.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kcnonline.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kcnonline.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95541\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kcnonline.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kcnonline.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kcnonline.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}