Anthony Alvarez loves Kansas.He moved there when he was 11, and now “every single person he cares about” and loves is in the Midwestern state, he tells TIME.[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]But lately, Alvarez says, he and his friends are thinking of leaving.Alvarez, a 21-year-old who will graduate from the University of Kansas this spring, came out as trans 6 years ago, and says the average Kansan has never bothered him about his gender. On campus, he walks into the men’s restroom without hesitation—just another student moving through his day.That calculus is changing, he says. Kansas Republicans last week overrode the veto of Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly to pass one of the most restrictive laws in the country for transgender residents, imposing new limits on bathroom access and identification.“I want to give my skills to Kansas. I want to live in the place I’ve called home for so long, but I can’t stay in a place that is going to be outwardly hostile to me,” Alvarez tells TIME. “I think most trans people in the United States are in a place where you love a state, you love a people, you love a land, but it doesn’t love you back.”Kansas had last year already joined a wave of states legislating against gender-affirming care for minors, prohibitions supported by President Donald Trump. The new law, Senate Bill 244, focuses on restricting identification and the use of “multiple-occupancy private spaces,” reviving the debate over “bathroom bills” that roiled states such as North Carolina in 2016.The law goes further than many comparable bills by invalidating licenses and birth certificates that transgender people have updated to reflect their gender identities and names, and by allowing private citizens to file a civil action of up to $1,000 against a person of a different sex if they are “aggrieved by an invasion of privacy” in some spaces. Republican lawmakers say the law’s aim is to protect women and girls. “While the governor fearmongers and muddies the water with her misleading veto message, our position remains steady: This isn’t about scoring political points, but doing what’s right for women and girls across our communities,” state House Speaker Daniel Hawkins said in a statement after the override.The law is expected to take effect as soon as Thursday. Republican statehouse leaders did not respond to TIME’s request for comment Wednesday.Kelly called the legislation “poorly drafted,” and experts worry that the bill’s broad language and sweeping changes will have unwanted consequences for anyone who uses public restrooms.“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 said in a statement after the veto override. Opponents of the bill say it was pushed through with little public input, after its “bathroom bill” provisions were added in late January. “The goal is to single out and and exclude, if not give a total license to discriminate against, transgender people in the state,” says Logan Casey, director of policy research at the Movement Advancement Project (MAP), a think tank. If he had been given the opportunity to speak to legislators, Alvarez says he would have testified for his rights.“The Kansas legislature has truly gutted the capacity for a regular Kansan to speak out about this bill. They’re really moving without the consensus of Kansans.”A rollback on drivers’ licenses and birth certificatesWhile laws in Florida, Tennessee and Texas also bar changes to gender markers for new drivers’ licenses, Kansas’s reversal of existing documents is unusual. Kansas officials expect to cancel about 1,700 driver’s licenses and issue new birth certificates for up to 1,800 people, according to the Kansas Department of Revenue.Alvarez said he has gone through four IDs in less than three years as he navigated different restrictions to get a new gender marker, change his name, and renew his ID after turning 21. He recounts the shaky relief when he finally received the ID with his preferred gender marker and his new name.“I was sweating bullets…. I remember the moment the license slipped out of the machine, I just grabbed it and ran out of the DMV,” Alvarez says. The new ID completely changed the “ease” of moving through life, he says.Now, he expects to be notified by mail that his ID is invalid—meaning a fifth round of paperwork.“It’s basically outing yourself to like every single person around you,” he says of having an ID that does not match his gender. “It affects so many parts of your life, and how the state sees you, how other people see you.”Representative data about trans Americans is historically sparse. But a 2024 survey of 192 respondents in Kansas, run by The Trevor Project, found that like Alvarez, 47% of LGBTQ+ 13-to-24-year-olds reported they or their family considered leaving because of the state’s policies. That figure rose to 56% for trans and nonbinary youth.And Tara McKay, director of the LGBTQ+ Policy Lab at Vanderbilt University, points to the U.S. Transgender Survey—billed as the largest survey of transgender people in the United States—which in 2022 showed that nearly a quarter of respondents reported being verbally harassed, denied benefits and services, or asked to leave establishments when they provided an ID that didn’t match their presentation.For Alvarez, and many like him, the rug is being pulled out from under them with these reversals, says McKay.Revoking IDs already issued to “folks who’ve socially transitioned, legally transitioned, possibly medically transitioned, creates a whole new set of problems,” she says. “This is a policy choice that predictably increases harm.”Casey, of MAP, points out that Kansas is a strict voter ID state. “In addition to all of the implications for daily life for transgender people in Kansas, there’s also this broader context of jeopardizing their ability to vote this fall in the midterm elections and beyond.”Critics fear “bounty hunter” bathroom provisionThe new law’s bathroom provisions not only restrict access, they create a “bounty hunter regime,” says LGBTQ+ rights group Lambda Legal, by allowing people to effectively sue transgender people who use the restroom not of their “biological sex.” The bill also allows people to be criminally charged with a class B misdemeanor for repeat violations.Jae Moyer, a nonbinary Kansas resident, participated in a “pee-in” at the Kansas Statehouse in Topeka earlier this month to protest the bill. They interpret the bill as the Kansas legislature telling trans people “we’re gonna make it so unsafe for you that you want to move.” Moyer plans to stay in Kansas. But this law “breaks my heart,” they say. “Folks that are already reporting that they are getting harassed and bullied in restrooms…there’s always going to be bullying that comes out of this type of legislation.”Casey says the bill’s restroom provision is not just “invasive and dangerous,” but “one of the widest-sweeping currently in the nation.” Like other state laws, S.B. 244 governs access to restrooms in government buildings. But Kansas joins four other states, according to MAP’s tracking, whose laws could be read to reach at least some private settings. “Given the ambiguity and the poor writing, this provision could be really broadly interpreted.”Isaac Johnson, a trans man who worked for years as a social worker in Kansas, credits the escalating attacks on transgender people there as his reason for moving two months ago to New York. He still organizes with the Kansas-based advocacy group Trans Lawrence Coalition.“I feel guilty, on one hand, for leaving Kansas and leaving all my friends behind. But also, everyone is fleeing right now,” he says. “I just want to shake these people and say: ‘Look, I’m a person. I just got to go to the bathroom. And you’re telling me I can’t.’”