Kansas Senate advances wide package of bills after hours of debate on individualized treatment, school pronouns and data center incentives

The Kansas Senate on Wednesday passed a broad package of legislation, advancing bills that drew extended debate on health care access, school policies and economic incentives.

Lawmakers approved a measure creating a state-level “right to try” pathway for individualized, physician-directed treatments for patients with ultra-rare, life-threatening or severely debilitating conditions, and voted to advance a contentious bill that would restrict school employees from being compelled to use a name or pronoun inconsistent with a student’s biological sex without parental permission. The Senate also moved forward an insurance verification bill that would let state officials create a real-time system to check whether a vehicle is insured, and approved a sales-tax exemption for qualifying large data center investments.

The votes mark a major push by the Republican-controlled Senate to clear bills ahead of the 2025 turnaround deadline while several measures also drew sustained floor debate from both parties.

Supporters of the individualized-treatment bill said it would provide a state pathway for terminal or rapidly deteriorating patients to pursue investigational therapies tailored to their genetics. Senator Gossage, the bill’s floor carrier, described families who traveled overseas for a personalized gene therapy and said the measure aims to give Kansans a safe, physician-led option when no approved treatment exists. Opponents and some senators warned that the bill’s language could be amended later to widen access and that related proposals — notably one amendment that would have added medicinal cannabis to the statute — raised broader public-safety and…