Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly on Friday vetoed a bill that would ban transgender minors from receiving gender transition surgeries and hormone therapy, setting up another veto override fight over efforts to regulate the lives of trans residents.

Kelly, a Democrat, described the legislation passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature as divisive, saying it targets a small group of Kansans by placing government mandates on them. The bill, she said, dictates to parents how to best raise and care for their children, adding that is not a “conservative value, and it’s certainly not a Kansas value.”

“To be clear, this legislation tramples parental rights,” Kelly said in a statement.

“The last place that I would want to be as a politician is between a parent and a child who needed medical care of any kind. And, yet, that is exactly what this legislation does,” Kelly said. “If the legislature paid this much attention to the other 99.8% of students, we’d have the best schools on earth.”

Kelly last year vetoed four Republican-led bills that imposed restrictions on trans residents, dictating their access to public accommodations and access to health care. Those included a measure banning transgender athletes competing in women’s sports, and another barring transgender people from single-sex spaces.

Republicans overrode Kelly’s veto on three of those bills, but could not garner enough votes to restrict gender-affirming care for minors, coming just one vote short.

Supporters of the legislation this year flipped key Republicans who had previously voted against it. This time, the measure passed in the Senate 27-13 with a veto-proof majority. The House vote was still two votes short of a veto-proof margin. But if two House Republicans who were absent from the initial floor vote now vote to override, the House would gain the two-thirds majority necessary.

Sen. Mike Thompson, a Shawnee Republican, sponsored the legislation. He said it is likely the bill will reach the two-thirds majority necessary to override the veto. The bill would protect children who may be coached into receiving gender-affirming care before they fully understand its permanent consequences, he said.

“We just want to give these kids a fighting chance to really think about and understand what they’re doing,” Thompson said. “And I think in a lot of cases, they’re being rushed into a situation that they don’t understand. They think it’s going to help and then realize later that it’s not, and that’s a very sad situation because there’s no reversing once you start down that path.”

The bill is further-reaching and far more dangerous than last year’s legislation, opponents say. It outlines a civil cause of action against health care providers who give children hormones or provide surgeries, kicks out providers who perform gender-affirming services from utilizing liability insurance and prohibits the use of state funding to “promote gender transitioning.”

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