Texas deal sought on ‘bathroom bill’
AUSTIN, Texas — Some schools in Texas have agreed at parents’ requests to keep secret the birth sexes of some students, in an effort to protect those who are transgender from ridicule.
But in a bill under consideration in the state Legislature, teachers would have to send transgender students to the bathroom corresponding to their birth sex, effectively divulging their identity to classmates.
The legislation “really boxes in school systems,” said Raffi Freedman-Gurspan, a spokesman for the National Center for Transgender Equality.
A broad bill requiring transgender individuals to use the restroom matching their birth-certificate sex passed the Senate but stalled in the House. Supporters revived it late Sunday, advancing a proposal applying only to the state’s public schools, which educate about 5.3 million students. That’s the second-largest number in the U.S.
Late Tuesday, the measure’s sponsor in the Texas Senate said that body will reject the socalled bathroom bill passed in the House and will go to a special committee to work out a compromise on the legislation.
GOP state Sen. Larry Taylor confirmed to The Dallas Morning News that he would reject the changes made to his Senate Bill 2078.
“It didn’t do what they said it would,” he said about the House’s changes to his bill. The sticking point, he said, was the House bill did not require students to use only the bathroom and locker room that matches their biological sex.
Taylor said he filed the necessary paperwork for a special committee earlier Tuesday.
While the House amendment’s author said the changes would require students to use the restroom that matches their biological sex, school districts said they didn’t believe they would be forced to kick transgender students out of facilities that match their gender identity.
Currently, each school and school district determines how to handle students whose birth sexes are secret — a small portion of Texas’ thousands of transgender children. A survey conducted by the Williams Institute at UCLA indicated that 13,800 Texas teens identify as transgender, but the number of children under age 13 is not known.
Some districts have nondiscrimination policies that explicitly include gender identity. Others have no formal policy but still shield students on a case-by-case basis.
Lindsey Pollock, a principal in the Houston Independent School District, said she tries to stick up for children, even under legal and political pressure.
“This has never been an issue,” said Pollock, who said she has always allowed transgender students to use the bathroom of their choice in her 17 years as a principal. “The problem is the adults looking to make it a problem.”
Just last year, a transgender girl entered kindergarten in Pollock’s Garden Oaks Montessori elementary, asking to keep her background secret.
“We introduced her as she identified and treated her as a girl,” Pollock said.
Still, Pollock said, if the bill passes, the district would seek a way forward “that would be least injurious to the children.”
But teachers at most Texas schools that are hiding students’ birth sexes are too afraid to take a public stance and are bracing for a crackdown by the state.
Lauryn Harris, an advocate for transgender children in San Antonio’s public schools, said teachers have expressed “great empathy and concern” for students but have also been warned to change their practices.
“One teacher has received a political threat from her boss that they must do what is decided in the Legislature,” Harris said.
That’s partly because many Texas parents get anxious at the idea of their children sharing a bathroom with a transgender child.
Miranda Shugart, a mother of four in the small northern Texas town of Whitesboro, said she is concerned about safety and harassment and that the “bathroom situation should be more strict than it is.”