TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Two transgender men are suing Kansas over a new law that invalidated their driver's licenses and about 1,700 others for reflecting people's gender identities and not their sex assigned at birth, arguing that the measure is “dehumanizing.”
The men filed their case Thursday, the same day the law took effect, and argue that it violates rights to privacy, personal autonomy and due legal process guaranteed by the Kansas Constitution. The men also are challenging the law's tough, new enforcement provisions for the state's 3-year-old policy of barring transgender people from using public restrooms or other single-sex facilities associated with their gender identities.
The men want to block the law, which also invalidated roughly 1,800 transgender people's birth certificates. They filed their case in district court in Douglas County, where they live, which is home to the main University of Kansas campus and is a liberal bastion in a red-leaning state.
“The Kansas Constitution prohibits the Kansas Legislature's targeting of transgender individuals for this discriminatory and dehumanizing treatment,” the lawsuit says.
The state Supreme Court declared in 2019 that the Kansas Bill of Rights confers and protects a right to bodily autonomy — a decision that protected abortion rights.
The new law was enacted last week when Republicans, who hold a supermajority in the Legislature, overrode a veto by Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly. The judge handling the lawsuit, James McCabria, was appointed to the bench in 2014 by Republican Gov. Sam Brownback, and Douglas County residents have voted three times since to keep him on the bench.
A 2023 state law, also enacted over Kelly's veto, defined male and female by a person's “biological reproductive system” at birth. The Kansas Supreme Court hasn't yet reviewed it.
This year's law calls for stiff fines for cities, counties, public schools and state agencies that don't restrict transgender people's use of facilities, as well as fines and criminal prosecutions for transgender people who violate it. People also can sue trans individuals over alleged violations.
Republican legislators argued that the new law will protect girls and women and often described transgender women and girls as male.
“Kansans expect clarity, not confusion,” House Speaker Dan Hawkins, a Wichita Republican, said after the law was enacted. “They expect leadership, not surrender to radical activists.”
The law bars any “sex” listing on driver's licenses and birth certificates other than the one assigned at birth and invalidates existing records that don't comply. The state has started notifying transgender people by mail that their licenses are invalid and they must get new ones immediately.
At least eight other states don't allow transgender people to change one or both documents, but only Kansas has invalidated documents that were previously changed.
The two men suing over the new law are from Lawrence, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) west of Kansas City, and represented by American Civil Liberties Union attorneys. They're identified as Daniel Doe and Matthew Moe, saying they fear discrimination, harassment and violence if they don't remain anonymous.
Small transgender and LGBTQ rights flags sit on the desks of Kansas state Reps. Tobias Schlingensiepen, right, D-Topeka, and Kirk Haskins, left, also D-Topeka, in the Kansas House chamber, protesting a new law that will prevent transgender people from changing their driver's licenses and birth certificates to reflect their gender identities and nullify past changes, Thursday, Feb. 19, 2026, at the Statehouse in Topeka, Kansas. (AP Photo/John Hanna)
Kansas State Reps. Susan Humphries, left, R-Wichita; Bob Lewis, center, R-Garden City, and Shannon Francis, right, R-Liberal, confer during a House debate on a measure to prevent transgender people from changing their driver's licenses and birth certificates to reflect their gender identities and invalidate any past changes made for them, Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026, at the Statehouse in Topeka, Kan. (AP Photo/John Hanna)
The Rev. Dr. Mandy Todd, left, pastor of Messiah Lutheran Church in Lindsborg, Kan., and Rabbi Moti Rieber, right, executive director of Kansas Interfaith Action, protest a new Kansas law that will invalidate hundreds of driver's licenses and birth certificates for transgender people that reflect their gender identities, Monday, Feb. 16, 2026, outside the Kansas Senate chamber in the Statehouse in Topeka, Kan. (AP Photo/John Hanna)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Bill Clinton told members of Congress on Friday that he “did nothing wrong” in his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and saw no signs of Epstein's sexual abuse as he faced hours of grilling from lawmakers over his connections to the disgraced financier from more than two decades ago.
“I saw nothing, and I did nothing wrong,” the former Democratic president said in an opening statement he shared on social media at the outset of the deposition. The closed-door deposition ended after more than six hours of questioning from lawmakers who said he answered every question posed to him.
The deposition in Chappaqua, New York, marked the first time a former president has been compelled to testify to Congress. It came a day after Clinton's wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, sat with lawmakers for her own deposition.
Bill Clinton has also not been accused of any wrongdoing. Yet lawmakers are grappling with what accountability in the United States looks like at a time when men around the world have been toppled from their high-powered posts for maintaining their connections with Epstein after he pleaded guilty in 2008 to state charges in Florida for soliciting prostitution from an underage girl.
“Men — and women for that matter — of great power and great wealth from all across the world have been able to get away with a lot of heinous crimes and they haven’t been held accountable and they have not even had to answer questions,” said Republican Rep. James Comer, the chair of the House Oversight Committee, before the deposition began Friday.
Hillary Clinton told lawmakers Thursday that she had no knowledge of how Epstein had sexually abused underage girls and had no recollection of even meeting him. But Bill Clinton will have to answer questions on a well-documented relationship with Epstein and his former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, even if it was from the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Bill Clinton, in his opening statement, said that he would likely often tell the committee that he did not recall the specifics of events from more than 20 years ago. But he also expressed certainty that he had not witnessed signs of Epstein's abuse.
Still, Republicans were relishing the opportunity to scrutinize the former Democratic president under oath.
“No one’s accusing anyone of any wrongdoing, but I think the American people have a lot of questions,” Comer said.
Republicans have wanted to question Bill Clinton about Epstein for years, especially as conspiracy theories arose following Epstein's 2019 suicide in a New York jail cell while he faced sex trafficking charges.
Those calls reached a fever pitch late last year when several photos of the former president surfaced in the Department of Justice's first release of case files on Epstein and Maxwell, a British socialite who was convicted of sex trafficking in December 2021 but maintains she's innocent. Bill Clinton was photographed on a plane seated alongside a woman, whose face is redacted, with his arm around her. Another photo showed Clinton and Maxwell in a pool with another person whose face was redacted.
Epstein also visited the White House several times during Clinton's presidency, and the pair later made several international trips together for their humanitarian work. Comer claimed the committee has collected evidence that Epstein visited the White House 17 times and that Bill Clinton flew on Epstein's airplane 27 times.
Democratic lawmakers said they also posed tough questions to Bill Clinton about his relationship with Epstein and Maxwell.
“We are only here because he hid it from everyone so well for so long,” Bill Clinton said in his opening statement. “And by the time it came to light with his 2008 guilty plea, I had long stopped associating with him.”
Comer pledged extensive questioning of the former president. He claimed that Hillary Clinton had repeatedly deferred questions about Epstein to her husband.
Bill Clinton went after Comer for calling his wife before the committee, telling him that “including her was simply not right.”
The committee was working to quickly publish a transcript and video recording of her deposition.
Democrats, who have supported the push to get answers from Bill Clinton, are arguing that it sets a precedent that should also apply to President Donald Trump, a Republican who had his own relationship with Epstein.
“I think that President Trump needs to man up, get in front of this committee and answer the questions and stop calling this investigation a hoax,” said Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the committee, on Friday.
Comer has pushed back on that idea, saying that Trump has answered questions on Epstein from the press.
Trump on Friday expressed remorse at Bill Clinton being forced to testify. “I like Bill Clinton, and I don’t like seeing him deposed,” he told reporters as he departed the White House en route to Corpus Christi, Texas.
Democrats are also calling for the resignation of Trump's Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Lutnick was a longtime neighbor of Epstein in New York City but said on a podcast that he severed ties with Epstein following a 2005 tour of Epstein’s home that disturbed Lutnick and his wife.
The public release of case files showed that Lutnick actually had two engagements with Epstein years later. He attended a 2011 event at Epstein's home, and in 2012 his family had lunch with Epstein on his private island.
“He should be removed from office and, at a minimum, should come before the committee,” Garcia said of Lutnick.
Republican Rep. Nancy Mace questioned Hillary Clinton about Lutnick's relationship to Epstein during the deposition on Thursday. On Friday morning, Mace joined in calling for the commerce secretary to come before the committee.
“I believe we will have the votes to subpoena him,” Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna said.
Follow the AP's coverage of Jeffrey Epstein at https://apnews.com/hub/jeffrey-epstein.
Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., speaks outside the Chappaqua Performing Arts Center where former President Bill Clinton was testifying before U.S. House lawmakers as part of a congressional investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Friday, Feb. 27, 2026, in Chappaqua, N.Y. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)
Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Va., talks on his phone outside the Chappaqua Performing Arts Center where former President Bill Clinton was testifying before U.S. House lawmakers as part of a congressional investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Friday, Feb. 27, 2026, in Chappaqua, N.Y. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)
Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Va., left, talks on his phone outside the Chappaqua Performing Arts Center where former President Bill Clinton was testifying before U.S. House lawmakers as part of a congressional investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Friday, Feb. 27, 2026, in Chappaqua, N.Y. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)
A motorcade carrying former President Bill Clinton approaches the Chappaqua Performing Arts Center where Clinton is scheduled to testify before U.S. House lawmakers as part of a congressional investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Friday, Feb. 27, 2026, in Chappaqua, N.Y. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)
Demonstrators walk around outside the Chappaqua Performing Arts Center while awaiting the arrival of former President Bill Clinton who is testifying before U.S. House lawmakers as part of a congressional investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, , Friday, Feb. 27, 2026, in Chappaqua, N.Y. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks outside the Chappaqua Performing Arts Center, after testifying before U.S. House lawmakers as part of a congressional investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Thursday, Feb. 26, 2026, in Chappaqua, N.Y. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
FILE - President Clinton sits with first lady Hillary Clinton during a campaign rally in San Antonio, Nov. 2, 1996. (AP Photo/Greg Gibson, file)
FILE - Former President Bill Clinton speaks in the Cash Room of the Treasury Department during an event for the anniversary of the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund,, Nov. 21, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)
