The Needle is issuing a voluntary retraction for our article “Kansas' Investigations of Trans People in Bathrooms Personally Overseen by Democrat Appointee Adam Proffitt,” which was published Aug 22. This retraction notice stands in its place, and anyone who follows a link to the former article will be redirected here. 

This is not due to legal pressure of any kind, but solely due to errors in the reporting.

We originally reported that Kansas Secretary of Administration Adam Profitt was acting as a central, personal investigator of complaints under SB 244. SB 244 is the law that required invalidation of the state-issued IDs of trans and nonbinary Kansans if their gender on those IDs was different from their assigned gender at birth, and also mandated that Kansans use bathrooms matching their assigned gender at birth (violating this law more than once is a misdemeanor). 

Our original article stated conclusively that Proffitt was engaging in overreach beyond the requirements of the law. After additional review of the documents we obtained, it is clear that those claims are not fully correct.

Here, we are correcting some misstatements in the original article.

1. Investigation

 We wrote that the policy requires "all suspected violations" to be "directly reviewed by" Proffitt, and that he "will be given not only the data of all accused of violating SB 244 to review, but also the data of all Kansas residents accusing their neighbor. 

Step four of the policy assigns investigations and determinations to the Department of Administration's Office of Personnel Services or to the head of that office. The Secretary of Administration is only required to enter the process at the appeal stage.That step exists because it "will constitute final agency action for the purpose of the Kansas Judicial Review Act."

2. Delegation

We wrote that "there is no statutory requirement that Proffitt personally investigate all claims" and that "he could delegate that duty."

The policy already delegates investigations to human resources and legal staff within the Department of Administration. 

SB 244 makes the chief administrative officer of a government building, or the governing body, where one exists, responsible for compliance. In this case, Proffitt is the chief administrative officer of any buildings operated by the Department of Administration.

We described a delegation that had already happened, and framed it as one his department could choose not to implement. 

3. AG Kobach’s Role

We wrote that SB 244 "requires that the state attorney general, in this case State Attorney General Kris Kobach, investigate such claims of violations."

It does not. Subsection (f) gives the attorney general authority over complaints against covered entities. Under subsection (g), his role is to bring an action to assess a penalty on a second violation. 

Attorney General Kris Kobach is not the investigator of individual complaints, and our comparison of his role to Proffitt's rested on that error.

4. Confidentiality

We wrote that Proffitt's "office has explicitly chosen not to make this information confidential, but rather to allow it into public record."

This is only partially correct. The provision we cited says complaints filed under SB 244(g)(1) are not confidential. However, the investigative file is treated differently. Step four of the same policy says it is "to be considered exempt from disclosure pursuant to KORA [the Kansas Open Records Act]," citing K.S.A. 45-221(a)(3), (4), (11) and (30). 

The department claimed four exemptions over that material. We accidentally reversed these claims through omission. 

5. Reporting

We wrote that Kansas has "policies instructing state employees to report their neighbors, colleagues, and the public."

This is only an implied instruction. The emails show Proffitt requesting that managers make their employees aware of the policy. 

The policy itself contains no such direct instructions. In other words, there is no mandatory reporting requirement within the text of the policy. 

Instead, the policies restrict who may complain: "Third party complaints will not be accepted. The complaint must come from the person who witnessed an alleged violation. Anonymous complaints will also not be accepted." 

Neither the statute nor the policy directs state employees to report anyone. 

6. Drafts

We wrote that the absence of draft language in the production showed the department was "spinning out new policy as quickly as it could, without even drafting earlier versions on the record."

We missed that under the applicable statutes, draft policy language circulated by counsel is routinely withheld under attorney-client privilege. 

Our own story noted that some of our requests were denied and others were conditioned on a fee of about $1,000 that we did not pay. A partial production is not good enough evidence of a missing drafting process. 

It was a failure on our editors’ part to not catch the difference.

7. Veto

The Kansas Legislature overrode Gov. Laura Kelly's veto of SB 244 on Feb. 18, 2026. The story attributed the override to Kobach.

8. Closer

The article ended with the polemic quote: "Mr. Proffitt, if you are so interested in personally reviewing images of trans people in bathrooms, we can suggest several existing websites instead of you taking these extreme measures." 

However, there is no direct evidence of images being involved in the investigation process.

That line rested on an incorrect premise. We are withdrawing it. Further, we apologize to Secretary Proffitt.

Both The Needle as a whole, and the specific writer of this quote, apologize sincerely.

What Remains True

Retracting the story does not mean we are retracting the documents. These are still available to the public, and can be found at the bottom of this article.

The following findings come directly from those documents:

The Department of Administration issued a "Policy on Designation of 'Multiple-Occupancy Private Spaces'" on Feb. 19, 2026, one day after the veto override.

SB 244 covers any "multiple-occupancy private space," which the statute defines to include restrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms and shower rooms.

Complaints under SB 244 require the complainant's name and contact information, the name or a detailed description of the person accused, and the names and contact information of any other witnesses.

Three buildings on the capitol campus have no single-occupancy restrooms: the Curtis Building, Memorial Hall, and the Printing/Mail and Surplus Property building. In those buildings, the statute leaves trans and nonbinary employees, and members of the public, with no option that is both lawful and safe. Jordan Brewer, counsel for the department, told the court in March that it had created no new signage and was "not opposed to a TRO for the bathroom portion."

The documents The Needle received contained no correspondence between Proffitt's office and Kobach's office, so we have no evidence that the Department of Administration sought guidance or clarification from the attorney general's office before implementing its policy.

Those facts stand. What we got wrong was what we took them to mean, and the context we placed them in.

What Happens Next

We will implement internal measures to ensure that the editorial failures in this article do not happen again.

In the interest of transparency, the editor assigned to this story was our fiction and satire editor, not our regular newsroom editor. 

In the future, The Needle intends to implement more rigorous measures to ensure accuracy and fairness in reporting.

The Needle intends to re-report the story from the documents, reading the policy's four steps in sequence and the statute's subsections against them. Any republished version will carry a new headline and link to this notice. 

In the interests of transparency and trustworthiness, our ethics and editorial standards commit us to retracting articles and correcting errors promptly and visibly.

Our satire editor has voluntarily stepped away from the mainline newsroom. The Needle as a whole is committed to accurately reporting stories pertinent not only to the trans community but to those invested in politics as a whole, without distortion or use of out-of-context quotes. 

We regret these mistakes.

All documents obtained as part of the records request which were obtained as part of the original article have been embedded below.