Hey, you're listening to the On the Media Midweek podcast. I'm Michael Lowinger.

This week, the Idaho Senate is considering a bill that would block transgender people from using public bathrooms that conform with their gender identity.

A first offense could land someone in prison for a year.

This bill is the latest in a cascade of legal action stripping away trans rights.

In Kansas...

Around 1,700 people in Kansas are about to have their driver's licenses declared invalid.

Why? Because they're transgender.

A new Kansas law takes effect requiring transgender people to use public building bathrooms

corresponding with their sex at birth. It lets any citizens sue someone they think is trans for

$1,000 if they violate that rule. In Tennessee, House Bill 754 would require clinics who perform

gender transition surgeries to also perform detransition procedures.

It would also require clinics and insurance companies to report the occurrence of these procedures to the Tenancy Department of Health, who would then record various statistics into a database.

And in West Virginia, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed a lower court ruling, meaning that the state's

Medicaid policy excluding coverage for gender affirming surgeries will be upheld.

That last ruling was based on a Supreme Court decision from June in a case called U.S. v. Scermedy.

The High Court upheld a Tennessee law banning puberty blockers and gender-affirming

care for minors. In order to better understand these legal setbacks, civil rights attorney

Alejandra Carabayo has looked to legal scholar Ernst Frankel. He created what was called

the dual state. Brooke spoke to Alejandra earlier this month.

And he divided it into two categories, the normative state and the prerogative state.

The normative state is basically everything that you run into every day.

You go and pay your taxes, you go to court, the state is pretty much acting as normal. And then there's

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