GOP overrides gov's veto to enact bill that could ban "husbands from wives' shared hospital rooms"https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2026/02/gop-overrides-govs-veto-to-enact-bill-that-could-ban-husbands-from-wives-shared-hospital-rooms/ 🔗Alex Bollinger (18 Feb 2026)
Republican lawmakers in Kansas overrode Gov. Laura Kelly's (D) veto of an extreme bathroom bill that Democrats say will ban people from visiting loved ones in hospitals, nursing homes, and dorms if they aren't of the same sex.
"As I said in my veto statement, this is a poorly drafted bill with significant, far-reaching consequences," Kelly said in a statement. "Not only will this bill keep brothers from visiting sisters' dorms and husbands from wives' shared hospital rooms, it will cost Kansas taxpayers millions of dollars to comply with this very vague legislation."
Kelly vetoed S.B. 244 last Friday. But, because Republicans have supermajorities in both chambers of the legislature, they were able to override her veto in a party-line vote. The Kansas House of Representatives voted 87-37 in favor of overriding her veto, and the state Senate voted 31-9 in favor. Both votes occurred in the last 24 hours.
Republicans in the state legislature passed S.B. 244 last month. The bill was originally about gender markers on drivers' licenses, but Republicans used a sneaky maneuver called "gut-and-go" to hold hearings on the drivers' license part of the bill and then change the text to include bathroom provisions, without holding hearings on those bathroom provisions.
The bathroom provisions will ban trans people from using facilities that do not align with their sex assigned at birth in government buildings.
