According to a press release dated Jan. 30 and time-stamped 7:38 p.m., the city of Dallas has officially caved to the rainbow-hating homophobes in Texas government, and Oak Lawn’s privately-funded rainbow crosswalks — and any other nonstandard crosswalk designs in the city — will be removed within the next 90 days.
The press release says: “The City of Dallas has notified the Texas Department of Transportation that it will comply with TxDOT’s directive requiring removal or correction of non-compliant pavement markings.”
The TxDOT “request” (aka Greg Abbott’s homophobic demand in order to kowtow to Trump, just like he did with the mid-decade congressional redistricting and by turning over Texas voter rolls to the feds) covers 30 decorative crosswalks citywide, the press release said.
“In a letter signed by Dallas City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert, the city notified the director of the TxDOT Traffic Safety Division that it will comply with the order within 90 days,” the press release continues, quoting Tolbert as saying that “The city appreciates TxDOT’s partnership in sustaining safe multimodal transportation in Dallas. The city will work with affected communities on ways to recognize their neighborhoods.”
The press release concludes: “TxDOT rejected the city’s appeal of the directive to remove pavement markings stating the intersections identified did not meet current Texas Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices requirements. TxDOT emphasized that all treatments must comply with the TMUTCD, the Secretary of Transportation’s Safe Road Initiative, and the governor’s directive issued Oct. 8, 2025, which prioritize uniformity and predictability in traffic control devices statewide.”
Considering that numerous studies and incidental data have proven that creative crosswalk designs actually enhance safety, the obvious truth is that Abbott and his minions don’t actually give a fat rat’s ass about safety; they just want to try and suppress the LGBTQ+ community and, at the same time, lick Trump’s boots.
Knowing our LGBTQ+/Oak Lawn community, however, we feel sure that while the homophobes may be winning this battle in the Rainbow War, the fight continues. We expect to see even more rainbows waving proudly across Oak Lawn soon.
For Julia Hewitt, the removal of LGBTQ+ services from the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline and potential funding freezes and cuts are a personal and professional issue.
As a suicide prevention leader with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, a lived experience adviser with Vibrant Emotional Health, which oversees the crisis line in Texas, and a parent of an LGBTQ child raised in Texas, Hewitt, who as a child witnessed her mother struggle with suicidal ideation, has spent decades putting her energy into providing reliable crisis services for everyone who needs them.
But now, she’s watching the foundation she and others created crumble.
“It was a punch to the gut because if you work or volunteer in this space, you know the families who are impacted by this; it can be hard to reconcile when you know how much good this does,” Hewitt said. “When access narrows for those at highest risk, the system becomes less protective overall.”
The 988 Lifeline was created through bipartisan legislation signed into law by President Donald Trump during his first term. This nationwide network of locally based crisis centers offers one-on-one support for mental health, suicide, and substance use-related problems for anyone 24/7.
When someone called 988 in the past, they would hear a greeting message, followed by a menu of choices offering access to specially trained counselors for veterans, Spanish speakers, and LGBTQ+ youth, or sometimes a local crisis counselor.
But last summer, the Trump administration announced in a press release that it will no longer silo LGBTQ+ youth services, which had been the “Press 3 option” for 988 callers, to focus on serving “all help seekers,” saying that these specific LGBTQ+ services had become too expensive.
The Trump administration and theSubstance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the federal agency that provides the majority of the funding for the 988 Lifeline, said the specialized LGBTQ subnetwork’s initial pilot budget of $33 million had been exceeded and unifying services for all callers was a better option.
After the change, only veterans and Spanish speakers still received a tailored option through the 988 call line.
The call line had received nearly 1.3 million contacts nationally from LGBTQ+ people since its launch in 2022 — leaving a void that Texas crisis care centers, already operating at a $7 million funding deficit, are expected to fill.
In Texas, calls made to the line have increased over the years. In December 2025, the Texas 988 system received 25,511. A year prior, that figure was 18,916 and in December 2023, it was 14,961. It’s not clear from publicly available data how many calls are rerouted to LGBTQ+ subnetworks.
Texas Health and Human Services officials said the agency doesn’t have data on how many calls are rerouted to a subnetwork.
Veterans and LGBTQ+ youth have a higher risk of suicide compared to the general population, and canceling specialized services for only one group has mental health experts questioning the administration’s true intent.
“The program was created with overwhelming bipartisan support because, despite our political differences, we should all agree that every young person’s life is worth saving,” Jaymes Black, CEO of the Trevor Project, an organization that helped create option 3, said in a statement. “I am heartbroken that this administration has decided to say, loudly and clearly, that they believe some young people’s lives are not worth saving.”
This comes at a time when some federal funding for the hotline is set to expire, and budget freezes and cuts are wreaking havoc on the network of local crisis centers that the entire 988 infrastructure depends on.
“Currently, Texas’s 988 system faces a convergence of challenges,” said Christine Busse, a peer policy fellow for the Texas branch of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, a nonprofit mental health organization that provides education and peer-to-peer support. “Without additional investment, meeting current demand — let alone absorbing the additional contacts previously handled by specialized services — will remain difficult.”
The removal of option 3
For many LGBTQ+ youth, the hotline was a safe space to be themselves, where they could be transferred to specialists within the LGBTQ+ Youth Subnetwork who usually had the lived experience to relate to them and help them talk through problems like drug and alcohol abuse, bullying, relationship troubles and suicidal thoughts.
Busse said the hotline handled up to 70,000 contacts per month nationwide, and her organization is troubled by its sudden removal because those young people are more than four times as likely to attempt suicide as their peers.
Specialized services are still offered by the Trevor Project and other organizations, but advocates say including them in 988 made it easy for people in crisis to get help by remembering just three numbers.
Now that options have been removed, LGBTQ+ youth are left with 988 dispatchers who are trained to handle a crisis, but might not have the lived experience or training needed to make someone feel safe during an emergency.
“While all callers can still reach trained counselors through 988, the loss of Option 3 eliminates a service designed to address the specific needs of a higher-risk population,” Busse said.
Some states like California have decided to address this issue by having experts from the Trevor Project train their operators. However, Texas lawmakers have not committed any additional resources to this effort.
“LGBTQ+ young people need more resources to end suicide, not fewer,” said Mark Henson, vice president of advocacy and government affairs at The Trevor Project.
Hewitt said she is confident that local operators will receive the specialized LGBTQ+ training to provide the needed care, but the issue is why they need to do it at all.
“There was an entire network that was created just for this, and that is the difference,” she said. “But this means additional training, and that equates to time, experience, people, and hours.”
Busse said another advantage of option 3 was that it routed calls from LGBTQ youth out of the 988 system to other organizations, and its cancellation means a heavier workload for everyone in the system.
The month-to-month data on the crisis hotline shows a steady increase in calls to Texas crisis centers that were already overburdened before the removal of the LGBTQ+ subnetworks.
“Texas’s 988 system was already strained before the removal of Option 3,” Busse said. “Without additional investment, meeting current demand — let alone absorbing the additional contacts previously handled by specialized services — will remain difficult.”
The cost of saving a life
The Texas 988 system currently receives $19 million in funding from two federal grants: the Mental Health Block Grant and the 988 State and Territory Improvement Award. The latter is set to expire in September, and it’s unclear whether Congress will extend it or whether the Trump administration will establish new funding streams.
This comes at a time when local crisis care centers, where many of the 988 call centers operate out of or partner with for their resources, are seeing investment in their services disappear and reappear at the whims of the federal government.
In a span of 24 hours earlier this month, the Trump administration announced wide-ranging budget cuts that many in health care warned would cripple mental health and crisis services across the nation. Amid a national outcry, the administration reversed its decision before the end of the day.
“People got letters, and everyone was panicking, and then it got reversed,” Hewitt said. “A great outcome, but this terminal uncertainty is creating a really poor experience for not only the client but also the person answering the calls.”
The 988 system wasn’t meant to be supported by the federal government forever, and Texas lawmakers like state Sen. José Menéndez have attempted to create a safety net for it.
Last year, lawmakers established the 988 Trust Fund through House Bill 5342 and required a study on sustainable funding mechanisms, including a potential state telecommunications fee, due by December. However, no state dollars have been appropriated to the trust.
Menéndez, who authored the bill that created the trust fund, said the idea of using a telecommunications fee, similar to the fee that supports 911, was quickly shot down at the Capitol.
“I’m concerned that if we don’t have any state funds, 988 is going to have to get reliant on philanthropy, fundraising, and other methods, and we have already started reaching out about how people can make contributions because this year some funds run out,” he said.
As federal funds continue to dwindle and the state shows little interest in propping up the service, the future of 988 in Texas might depend on donations from Texans.
“That uncertainty is precisely why legislative action is imperative,” Busse said. “The infrastructure exists; what is needed now is the commitment to fund it. Without dedicated funding mechanisms, such as a telecommunications fee, Texans risk facing a mental health crisis without the community support network that took years to build.”
For mental health support for LGBTQ youth, call the Trevor Project’s 24/7 toll-free support line at 866-488-7386. For trans peer support, call the Trans Lifeline at 877-565-8860. You can also reach a trained crisis counselor through the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988.
Texas judges can decline to perform same-sex weddings because of their “sincerely held religious belief” and not be in violation of the rules on judicial impartiality, according to the Texas Supreme Court.
A lawsuit is being brought by Judge Brian Keith Umphress in Jack County, Texas, against the Texas State Commission on Judicial Conduct. In November 2019, the commission issued a “public warning” to Dianne Hensley, a justice of the peace who recused herself from officiating at same-sex weddings, according to coverage by Legal Newsline.
Umphress later sued the commission’s members, citing that a judge’s refusal to officiate only same-sex unions could result in sanctions by the commission and violate his federal constitutional rights.
He is seeking declaratory and injunctive relief to restrain the commission from punishing judges for not performing same-sex marriage ceremonies, for either religious or secular reasons.
Texas’ virulently anti-trans attorney general, Ken Paxton (R), has launched a tip line that allows people to report on suspected trans people they believe are violating the state’s new bathroom ban.
In a statement announcing the tip line, Paxton said the Texas Women’s Privacy Act – which requires people in public buildings to use bathrooms based on sex assigned at birth – “was passed to ensure that women and girls in Texas are protected from mentally ill men wanting to violate their basic right to privacy.”
“It’s absolute insanity that action like this is even needed,” he claimed, “but unfortunately, in the day and age of radical leftism, it is.”
In reality, research has shown no evidence that allowing trans women access to single-sex spaces like bathrooms poses a safety risk to cisgender women.
In fact, forcing trans people to use facilities that do not align with their gender identity can result in “high rates of harassment and violence against transgender people as well as cisgender people, particularly women who do not conform to traditional ideas of femininity,” according to the Movement Advancement Project. A 2021 study from UCLA’s Williams Institute found that trans people are four times more likely than cis people to be victims of violent crime.
Nevertheless, the enactment of the legislation marks the culmination of a 10-year effort by Texas Republicans. The law does not allow an individual to be punished or fined by the state; rather, it fines the institution that allowed the infraction $25,000, plus an additional $125,000 per day for additional violations.
The law also requires the attorney general’s office to investigate complaints, but first, complaints must be filed with the accused agency. “Together, we will uproot and bring justice to any state agency or political subdivision that opens the door for men to violate women’s privacy, dignity, and safety,” Paxton said.
Paxton’s tip line requires folks to submit the original complaint that was filed with the accused agency in addition to filling out the online form and providing “evidence” that a trans person used the restroom. Perhaps most concerning, it also includes an option to submit up to five photos, even though taking pictures in restrooms is illegal.
Brian Klosterboer, senior staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, said the tip line “wrongly encourages Texans to violate each other’s privacy in bathrooms.”
“The Attorney General has tried for years to vilify and dehumanize transgender Texans,” Klosterboer said, “but he can’t strip away every person’s right to privacy and right to live our lives free from gender stereotyping.”
Critics of the law have worried that it will spark violent over-policing by the institutions at risk of these massive fines. This policing will affect both trans and cis people who don’t fit strict gender norms.
The law has already been used in ways that lawmakers may not have intended. Students at the University of Texas San Antonio (UTSA), for example, are being forced out of their current dorm rooms and made to relocate because of the ban.
At UTSA, mixed-gender dorms include pairs of rooms separated by a shared bathroom; often, those rooms are occupied by people of different genders. Any students sharing a bathroom between their rooms with someone of a different sex assigned at birth are being forcibly rehoused to comply with the new law.
On December 6, transgender protestors with a group called the 6W Project visited the Texas Capitol and attempted to use the restrooms that aligned with their gender identities to make a point about the lack of enforcement mechanisms in the law.
At first, they easily entered the bathrooms of their choice, then proceeded to give speeches in the Capitol Rotunda, The Texas Tribune reported. But when they attempted to use the restrooms a second time, officers stopped them and asked to see their IDs.
Officers claimed in a statement that the ID requests were voluntary, though those who did not show their IDs were barred from entering the bathroom. The officers did allow two trans women with female markers on their IDs to enter the women’s restrooms. Officers also reportedly only guarded the women’s restroom and not the men’s.
“I think that the Texas government just established that they have no consistent enforceable standards for this law,” protester Matilda Miller told the Texas Tribune.
“What we did was not radical, it was not profound,” added 6W Project co-founder Ry Vazquez. “People use the restroom every day in a public setting, and for it to become what it is now, where it is now an active threat to someone who is not prepared, is utterly abysmal.”
The state of Texas has continued collecting information on transgender drivers seeking to change the sex listed on their licenses, creating a list of more than 100 people in one year.
According to internal documents The Texas Newsroom obtained through records requests, the Texas Department of Public Safety has amassed a list of 110 people who tried to update their gender between August 2024 and August 2025. Employees with driver’s license offices across the state, from El Paso to Paris to Plano, reported the names and license numbers of these people to a special agency email account. Identifying information was redacted from the records released to The Texas Newsroom.
The data was collected after Texas stopped allowing drivers to update the gender on their licenses unless it was to fix a clerical error. It is unclear what the state is doing with this information.
An agency spokesperson did not respond to questions about why the list was created and whether it was shared with any other agencies or state officials. The Texas Newsroom filed records requests in an attempt to find the answers but did not receive any additional information that sheds light on what the state may be doing with these names.
In recent years, GOP lawmakers have passed multiple laws restricting the rights of transgender Texans, including two new measures that went into effect this year.
One defines “male” and “female” on state documents as being based on a person’s reproductive system. The other, known as the “bathroom bill,” bars governments from allowing people to use a restroom at public buildings, parks or libraries that do not match their sex at birth.
While it’s unclear how the state plans to enforce the bathroom bill, transgender activist Ry Vazquez told KUT News she was asked to show her ID before using a restroom in the state Capitol earlier this month. Vazquez said she and three other people were then cited with criminal trespassing and banned from the building for a year.
Landon Richie, the policy coordinator with the Transgender Education Network of Texas, is concerned that the list the state is keeping will be used to pass more state laws targeting the rights of transgender Texans.
“The state collecting this information raises a lot of red flags, not just in terms of people’s privacy and ability to exist not under a magnifying glass,” he said. He added that he wonders “how this information will be leveraged in terms of drafting and crafting additional legislation” to chip away at the civil rights and freedoms of transgender Texans.
For years, transgender people in Texas could update their state IDs to match their gender identity by obtaining a court order and then submitting this document to the state agencies that issue driver’s licenses and birth certificates. After the state restricted updates to driver’s licenses last fall, the state’s health agency followed suit, blocking changes to birth certificates other than to correct hospital errors or omissions.
In March, The Texas Newsroom reported that the state was collecting information on people who continued to ask for these changes despite the policy shift.
The attorney general, whose office determines what records are public, allowed the agency to keep other documents about the policy shift secret. But it did release a list of the four employees with access to the special email account.
The Texas Newsroom also obtained records that show the agency investigated threats against the driver’s license division chief after news of the policy change was made public. But no case was referred to the Travis County Attorney’s Office for prosecution.
The Texas Newsroom has requested an updated version of the list.
Organizers of Arlington Pride announced Friday they will cancel next year’s event after the City Council rejected a plan to ban discrimination against gay and transgender residents.
The head of the HELP Center for LGBT Health and Wellness said in a statement the organization would not invite visitors to a city that does not offer “the most basic protections.”
“Pride is about safety, celebration, and community,” said DeeJay Johannessen, CEO of the HELP Center, which has offices in Arlington and Fort Worth. “Without local anti-discrimination safeguards, we cannot guarantee those values for our attendees, performers, or partners.”
Arlington Pride began in 2021 and quickly grew to one of the largest celebrations of its kind in North Texas, drawing more than 15,000 people to downtown in June this year. The all-day festival featured performances by RuPaul’s Drag Race queens, live music, an art show and local food vendors.The decision to suspend the event comes only three days after City Council members scrapped a plan to enshrine protections for LGBTQ residents into a city ordinance. The 5-4 vote followed months of debate, delayed votes and impassioned pleas from the LGBTQ community and allies to restore protections.
Initially passed unanimously in 2021, the ordinance prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity for housing, employment and public services. Discrimination against race, religion, national origin, sex and disability was also banned.
In September, the City Council temporarily suspended the ordinance over fears that Arlington risked losing more than $60 million in federal funding after President Donald Trump pledged to withhold money from cities with diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs. The president’s order has sown widespread confusion among cities that are unsure what qualifies as DEI.
For now, this means Arlington is no longer investigating complaints from people who say they faced discrimination by a landlord, business owner or employer. The vote makes Arlington one of the first cities in the country, if not the first, to repeal a nondiscrimination ordinance over fears of clashing with the Trump administration.
Some Arlington council members said they did not think the city could enforce its anti-discrimination ordinance. Council member Rebecca Boxall, who voted against restoring the ordinance, called it “bad policy.”
“From the very beginning, it was unenforceable at the city level,” said Boxall, who represents downtown Arlington. “The way I looked at it, and a lot of you mentioned protections, it does not offer protection. So in that respect, it’s just misleading. It’s just plain misleading.”
Federal law protects Americans from being discriminated against in public places based on disability, race, color, religion or national origin, but does not explicitly provide protections based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
More than 20 states and nearly 400 cities across the country have policies banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, according to the Movement Advancement Project, a nonprofit research organization that tracks legislation related to LGBTQ issues. Texas has no such policy. Dallas, Fort Worth and Plano include LGBTQ residents in their anti-discrimination ordinances.
Mayor Jim Ross, who voted to restore protections, pledged to continue working on the issue and said the council will revisit the ordinance in coming weeks.
“Arlington is one of the most welcoming places,” Ross said. “We want everyone to know they can feel safe and comfortable here.”
On social media, responses to the cancellation of the 2026 Pride festival were mixed. Some said they did not want to spend time or money in a community that did not protect them, but others said this should drive an even larger event. Pride began in 1970 in a handful of U.S. cities to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the police raids on the Stonewall Inn in New York.
“Don’t you think now more than ever,” one person asked on Instagram, “we should host a louder, more exuberant pride?”
The Arlington City Council voted Tuesday night not to reinstate local anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ residents and others.
As a result, the city’s entire anti-discrimination ordinance will remain suspended for the time being, including provisions that previously protected people based on sexual orientation, gender identity, race, religion and other characteristics.
The measure failed 5-4. Mayor Jim Ross joined Councilmembers Nikkie Hunter, Andrew Piel and Barbara Odom-Wesley in voting to bring back the ordinance. Councilmembers Mauricio Galante, Raul Gonzalez, Rebecca Boxall, Long Pham and Bowie Hogg voted against reinstatement.
“I’ve had heated discussions with community leaders on both sides of the fence and it hasn’t been easy,” Ross said. “Ultimately, tweaking this in some way, shape or form is necessary. I also believe reinstating this ordinance in its entirety is necessary. We have to let our community in Arlington know – you matter to us.”
Ross asked what kind of message they are sending to their children by removing these protections.
“I would not be able to live with myself if I didn’t vote yes on this ordinance,” he said.
There was no other vote on the ordinance Tuesday night, meaning the rest of its protections remain suspended for now.
Those who voted against reinstatement argued that state and federal laws already prohibit much discrimination, making the local ordinance unnecessary.
Councilmember Rebecca Boxall described the 2021 ordinance as “bad policy,” saying it was a symbolic gesture at best and unenforceable at the city level. She argued existing laws give everyone the same protections.
“We already have the protections under our federal and state laws,” she said.
Councilmember Bowie Hogg added that allegations of discrimination should be addressed at the state or federal level rather than by city government.
Supporters of reinstatement rejected that position, saying federal and state laws are not enough.
“We have zero tolerance for discrimination,” Councilmember Barbara Odom-Wesley said.
She argued local safeguards remain necessary because laws alone cannot regulate people’s hearts or guarantee people are treated with respect.
During the public hearing portion of the meeting, 34 speakers urged the council to restore the protections, while 11 spoke in opposition. Many supporters described the ordinance as a critical safeguard for their dignity and safety.
“This is my life on the line, and I don’t want to have to leave,” one resident said.
Nathan Smith, director of public affairs & community engagement at the HELP Center for LGBT Health & Wellness, was one of many speakers against the proposal at the meeting.
“I have no idea why you started us down this path,” Smith told council members. “You’ve been handed legal opinions stating funding is not at threat.”
Arlington resident Katie Duran told council members that if they oppose the non-discrimination ordinance, they’re saying to other families that they can be born in Arlington, but based on who they are, they can’t stay here.
“We are the dream city, we are not the discrimination city,” Duran said. “Why is this even up for discussion? We’re talking about human rights. Show that you actually do care about the citizens of Arlington and reinstate the protections.”
Some speakers argued that there were already state and federal laws covering protections against discrimination, and that there was no need to duplicate those protections in a city ordinance.
The city began debating the change months ago after the Trump administration said it would revoke federal grants from cities that they say violate federal anti-discrimination laws by providing access to “opportunities, benefits, or advantages” based on protected characteristics such as race, gender, or sexual orientation.
In October, the city delayed a vote on a proposal to remove the protections from the city’s anti-discrimination ordinance, saying it needed additional legal counsel. The vote was delayed again in November after a council member experienced a death in the family.
If the protections are removed, it would make Arlington one of the first, if not the first, U.S. cities to take that step, WFAA previously reported.
Ross previously told WFAA that he will vote to keep the city’s current anti-discrimination ordinance intact. He said the city is working to balance residents’ concerns with financial considerations.
“It’s a difficult process. I think we’ve come up with a solution. We’re fine-tuning that as we speak,” Ross said. “I want everybody in Arlington to feel like we’re taking care of them, but when you’re talking hundreds of millions of dollars, it’s tough.”
LGBTQ+ advocates have previously packed city council meetings to oppose the proposal, WFAA previously reported.
“We’re never gonna sit back while civil rights are being stripped away,” DeeJay Johannessen, CEO of the Help Center for LGBTQ+ Health, who is leading a citywide campaign urging residents to oppose the change, previously told WFAA.
Conservative advocacy groups, such as Texas Values, support the change.
“Texas Values recommended that the Arlington City Council remove the terms ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘gender identity’ from the ordinance in order to comply with federal directives, as well as newly enacted state law such as the Texas Women’s Privacy Act (S.B. 8), which went into effect last week,” the organization said in a statement.
The grim consequences for transgender students in Texas are coming into focus three months after the state’s sweeping new Don’t Say Gay legislation went into effect in September.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) signed the so-called “Bill of Parental Rights” in June, a draconian right-wing wishlist of MAGA priorities banning discussion of LGBTQ+ identity and race in classrooms, shutting down gay-straight student alliances (GSAs) on school campuses, and explicitly prohibiting school staff from supporting trans students, alongside other restrictive measures.
The prohibitions around social transition mean kids known to their classmates and teachers by their preferred name and identity for years are now being deadnamed and forced to assume an identity they’d abandoned long ago.
Ethan Brignac, a trans student at Wylie East High School northeast of Dallas, has been known by his chosen name since seventh grade. With the new legislation in effect, the high school senior lobbied teachers to continue using it.
“In the first week of school, when I was kind of trying to convince my teachers to call me Ethan, I was like, ‘Hey, look, it’s still on my ID.’”
“Then one of my teachers this year said, ‘Okay, they’re gonna fix that soon.’”
Three weeks later, school administrators called him to the library and gave him a new ID. Ethan was now officially identified by his deadname.
He says some teachers seem to make a point of working his legal name into every interaction, he told the Texas Tribune, outing him to peers and rekindling the dread he felt in his time before Ethan.
“It was definitely a big change having my deadname kind of sprawled everywhere,” he said, “It was like, wow, okay, that wasn’t just a social media post I saw, this is real life.”
A school spokesperson confirmed the change was “to ensure full compliance with state law, including Senate Bill 12.”
In the Leander school district north of Austin, faculty may continue to call students by their preferred name, if it was done prior to SB 12’s implementation. But for new students, the use of their chosen names and pronouns is banned. Parents can request a name change, but those updates are only allowed if they’re unrelated to social transitioning, said Conner Carlow, a classroom support specialist in the district.
Carlow grappled with his own sexuality as a middle schooler and recalled how hard it was.
“I wasn’t telling my parents what was going on, so I imagine these kids aren’t either,” Carlow said. “The fact they’re willing to tell us before even the parents is a big deal, and now the fact that we have to just not accept them, I mean, it’s awful.”
The school board in Conroe, Texas, north of Houston, was among the first in Texas to bar teachers from using gender-affirming names and pronouns.
At Woodlands High School in the district, junior Cassie Hilborn had planned to come out as trans, but the onslaught of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation stripped her of her confidence, she says.
“It feels like every day I look at the news and then the headline just reads, ‘Sorry, more things you’ve lost.’”
Cassie takes refuge at the school’s Dungeons & Dragons club, where classmates and a faculty adviser call her by her chosen name. She lodges a small protest against SB 12 by hiding the deadname on her school ID under blue masking tape.
But Cassie remains discouraged, she said.
“Now, even teachers that might have respected my identity have been told that they unequivocally are not allowed to do so,” Cassie said.
A Texas A&M committee agreed that the university was wrong to fire a professor earlier this year after a controversy over a classroom video that showed a student objecting to a children’s literature lesson about gender identity.
The internal committee ruled that the university didn’t follow proper procedures and didn’t prove there was good cause to fire Melissa McCoul, who was a senior lecturer in the English department with over a decade of teaching experience. Republican lawmakers, including Gov. Greg Abbott, had called for her termination after seeing the video.
The committee unanimously voted earlier this week that “the summary dismissal of Dr. McCoul was not justified.”
The university said in a statement that interim President Tommy Williams has received the committee’s nonbinding recommendation and will make a decision in the coming days or weeks after reviewing it.
McCoul’s lawyer, Amanda Reichek, said this dispute seems destined to wind up in court because the university appears to plan to continue fighting and the interim president is facing the same political pressure.
“Dr. McCoul asserts that the flimsy reasons proffered by A&M for her termination are a pretext for the University’s true motivation: capitulation to Governor Abbott’s demands,” Reichek said in a statement.
The video showing a student questioning whether the class discussion was legal under President Trump’s executive order on gender roiled the campus and led to sharp criticism of university president Mark Welsh, who later resigned, but he didn’t offer a reason and never mentioned the video in his resignation announcement.
The opening of the video posted by state Rep. Brian Harrison showed a slide titled “Gender Unicorn” that highlighted different gender identities and expressions.
Students in the class told the Texas Tribune that they were discussing a book called “Jude Saves the World” about a middle schooler who is coming out as nonbinary. That was just one of several books included in the course that highlights LGBTQ+ issues.
After a brief back-and-forth discussion about the legality of teaching those lessons, McCoul asked the student to leave the class. Harrison posted other recordings of the student’s meeting with Welsh that show the university president defending McCoul’s teaching.
The Tribune reported that McCoul had taught the same course at A&M at least 12 times since 2018. University officials decided to end this particular summer class early after the confrontation, but McCoul returned to teach in the fall until after the videos were published online.
Welsh had said when McCoul was fired that he learned she had continued teaching content in a children’s literature course “that did not align with any reasonable expectation of standard curriculum for the course.” He also said that the course content was not matching its catalog descriptions. But her lawyer disputed that, and said McCoul was never instructed to change her course content in any way, shape or form.
Earlier this month, the Texas A&M Regents decided that professors now need to receive approval from the school president to discuss some race and gender topics.
The new policy states that no academic course “will advocate race or gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity” unless approved in advance by a campus president.
Various universities and their presidents around the country, including Harvard and Columbia have come under scrutiny from conservative critics and President Donald Trump administration over diversity, equity and inclusion practices and their responses to campus protests.
Ethan Brignac, a transgender student at Wylie East High School, has been “Ethan” since seventh grade — to his friends, family and teachers. When he reached high school, his dad further validated his chosen name by requesting “Ethan” be used in school records, including in his email, class rosters and ID, which his teachers honored until this fall.
Three weeks after Brignac started his senior year, Wylie East administrators called him to the library and gave him a new ID. On it, in white capital letters, was a name he hadn’t been called in five years.
“In the first week of school, when I was kind of trying to convince my teachers to call me Ethan, I was like, ‘Hey, look, it’s still on my ID,’” said Brignac, who did not want The Texas Tribune to publish his birth name because it causes him discomfort. “Then one of my teachers this year said, ‘Okay, they’re gonna fix that soon.’”
Now, he said, some teachers seem to wedge his legal name into every interaction, outing him to peers and resurrecting the dread he felt before school records reflected his chosen name.
“It was definitely a big change having my deadname kind of sprawled everywhere,” Brignac said, referring to a derogatory practice of calling a trans person by their birth name. “It was like, wow, okay, that wasn’t just a social media post I saw, this is real life.”
A Wylie spokesperson said the move was “to ensure full compliance with state law, including Senate Bill 12.”
A sweeping piece of legislation that went into effect Sept. 1, SB 12 bars public school employees from socially transitioning a student, which it defines as helping to change a student’s sex assigned at birth by using a different name, pronoun or other practice that denies the birth sex. Dubbed the “Parents’ Bill of Rights,” the law allows guardians to report school-supported social transitioning to the school board, among other powers.
The law also prohibits K-12 faculty from referencing LGBTQ+ identities in class instruction and casual conversations, and it bans school-sanctioned clubs that center sexual orientation or gender identity.
Several transgender students at Texas schools that enforce birth names told the Tribune the new policies have transformed school from a place of support to one that rejects who they are. Considered a derogatory practice in the LGBTQ+ community, dead-naming undermines the wishes of trans people and in some cases, forcibly reveals their trans identity, which can cause or worsen mental health problems among these children, studies have found.
Some parents of trans Texas students say they are frustrated because the law appears to ignore their rights for those of other guardians. A few of these parents joined advocacy and teacher groups to file a lawsuit against SB 12 in August, seeking to pause districts from enforcing the law while the case proceeds.
Parents who support SB 12 say the law boosts their role in their children’s education. Many of them want to erase LGBTQ+ topics from K-12 schools, saying they prompt children to question their identities or that schools force progressive views onto their kids.
“We live in an insane world where a school board has to remind teachers that they cannot tell children, you know, suggest to kids they might be homosexual or they might be actually a girl if they’re a biological male,” said Jeffrey Keech, whose children go to Wylie schools. “It’s unbelievable to me that this even is an issue.”
The Tribune contacted two dozen districts across the state, including districts in the Austin, Houston and San Antonio areas, and spoke with a dozen teachers, parents and transgender students about how schools are implementing SB 12, finding that administrators are taking varied approaches. This is because the law leaves the Texas Education Agency and school districts to decide how to implement it, said Rachel Moran, a law professor at Texas A&M University who directs the education law program.
Some Texas school districts and boards, like Wylie, have adopted policies to ban teachers from aiding in social transitioning, but many have not yet — and are still allowing teachers to honor students’ preferred names and pronouns.
TEA would not respond to questions about how school districts are implementing SB 12, how many districts have complied with the law or deadlines for doing so.
Moran said schools might adopt hard-line policies to shield themselves from retribution.
“This is true with any broad mandate — some are going to be overcomplying,” she said. “It has a real chilling effect. They’re afraid to get anywhere close to a perceived line.”
Teachers told the Tribune the law leaves them anxious and confused because they are unsure when they can use nicknames or how they should respond to parents who request their children’s preferred names and pronouns be used. They lament that they won’t be able to support students who come out as queer. School district officials also worry how the policies will interfere with federal and district rules and daily affairs.
Now, Texas public school students sit in the crosshairs of debates over free speech, race, religion and gender and sexuality in school.
SB 12 is part of a slate of laws that increase oversight of K-12 schools, including new rules that mandate the Ten Commandments in classrooms and clear the way for book bans. In federal and state governments and now school board meetings, disagreements have escalated from “I don’t think that you have the right idea,” to “I don’t think you’re the right kind of person,” Moran said.
Once a place to hear diverse perspectives, she worries schools will leave children unable to tolerate different views.
“The stakes are not just whether I win or lose this particular culture war,” Moran said. “It’s whether I preserve a tradition that has been so formative of our democracy.”
School policies vary
In addition to the ban on social transitioning, SB 12 prohibits hiring, training, programs and activities centered on race, ethnicity, gender identity and sexual orientation — referenced in the law as diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives.
It also requires schools to tell parents their rights, such as allowing them access to school records and course content, and requiring that they give permission for their child to receive health care, hear lessons about sexuality and join clubs.
Among parts of the bill that confuse teachers and administrators is how to respond when parents ask that schools use their child’s preferred name and pronouns or what to call students who have already transitioned.
More than two months after the deadline to comply with SB 12, districts are implementing the bill differently.
Conner Carlow, a former registrar who now works as a classroom support specialist in the Leander school district, said faculty can continue to call students by their preferred name if that was done prior to SB 12 going into effect. However, faculty cannot use new names or new pronouns moving forward, and administrators must approve fresh changes on a case-by-case basis through a form parents submit. These updates are only allowed if they appear unrelated to social transitioning, he said.
The name change form is the only written directive Carlow has gotten regarding SB 12. Leander spokesperson Crestina Hardie would not say how the school district is handling name changes because the board has no policy about it. Hardie said the school district is waiting to enact new rules while it reviews the law and gets clarification from TEA and the district’s legal counsel.
“SB 12 deeply impacts personal and highly complex areas of school life, and the biggest challenge for districts statewide is the lack of clarity and consistency in how these laws intersect with existing Board policy, federal protections and day-to-day school operations,” Hardie said.
The Cypress-Fairbanks and Conroe school districts adopted policies that ban DEI practices and prohibit social transitioning or providing information about it.
Argyle and Academy school districts have posted parental rights resolutions, but nothing on social transitioning.
Deer Park linked SB 12 on its website, but it is unclear how the district will implement the law, including gender-affirming names and pronouns.
Wylie distributed a fact sheet advising employees to use the names and pronouns in school records and barring them from discussing race, color, ethnicity, gender identity and sexual orientation.
Although officials disagreed with parts of the law, Houston-based DRAW Academy rolled out the new rules. The 98% Hispanic charter district issued parental notices and consent forms, banned DEI and limited instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity, according to superintendent and CEO Patricia Beistegui.
“DRAW Academy stands for Diversity, Roots, and Wings, founded under the core belief that diversity and inclusivity is a strength in our democracy,” Beistegui said in an email. She said SB 12 is designed to make positive changes but actually revokes protections.
SB 12 and the way schools are implementing it forces teachers to blindly try to follow the law, said Charlotte Wilson, a Garland ISD special education teacher.
“It’s not clear to teachers what we can say or even do,” Wilson said, referencing instruction about race and LGBT topics. “Teachers are afraid because we don’t want to lose our certifications.”
Wilson wants a say in her children’s learning, but she thinks the law might lead teachers to skip lessons that touch on prohibited themes, undermining students’ quality of education.
“We already highlight different cultural historical events throughout the year, like MLK Day, Hispanic Heritage Month, women’s history,” Wilson said. “If we approach Pride Month the same way, as part of America’s inclusion, and communicate about what’s being taught, that shouldn’t violate anyone’s rights.”
Carlow said Leander’s bar on LGBTQ+ topics makes it hard to support his students. He remembers grappling with his sexuality as a middle schooler and how hard that was.
“I wasn’t telling my parents what was going on, so I imagine these kids aren’t either,” Carlow said. “The fact they’re willing to tell us before even the parents is a big deal, and now the fact that we have to just not accept them, I mean, it’s awful.”
“Called something I’m not”
The varied approaches to SB 12 means transgender students across Texas are experiencing different levels of alienation.
Pride flags fly and teachers use gender-affirming pronouns at Alief Early College High School, said Marshall Romero, a transgender third-year. The only change he noticed was a permission slip to join the speech and debate club.
An Alief spokesperson said the district also sent parents an opt-in and opt-out form for school health services.
Romero said the school remains largely supportive of LGTBQ+ students.
“I never had to worry about the teacher or any instructor telling me, like, ‘Hey, I can’t call you that, or I’m not going to call you that,’” Romero said. “Being able to be called by a name that reflects who I am, being called by certain pronouns, just really gives me a quality of life that I feel like I can hold on and is worth living.”
Cassie Hilborn, a Woodlands High School junior, yearns to be called her gender-affirming name at school. One of Hilborn’s earliest memories is looking in the mirror and wishing she was a girl. During the pandemic, she watched a YouTube video explaining what it meant to be transgender and finally understood why she felt misaligned with her body.
But the past year’s onslaught of transgender-focused federal and state policies stripped her confidence and dashed her plan to wear feminine clothes and ask her teachers to use her chosen name.
“It feels like every day I look at the news and then the headline just reads, ‘Sorry, more things you’ve lost,’” Hilborn said.
The Conroe school board, which governs Woodlands High School, was among the first in Texas to bar teachers from using gender-affirming names and pronouns.
At the school Dungeons & Dragons club, Hilborn’s peers and faculty adviser call her “Cassie,” but everyone else uses the legal name on her ID, which she hides under blue masking tape. She wants her classmates and teachers to know she’s transgender, but laws like SB 12 have discouraged her from coming out.
“Now, even teachers that might have respected my identity have been told that they unequivocally are not allowed to do so,” Hilborn said.
Once school records reflected Brignac’s preferred name, his grades climbed. He became president of the National Art Honor Society and founded an art mentorship program. He raised his hand so often that one teacher joked about it.
His stepmom Shannon Keene worries that being misgendered at school will thrust him back into isolation, like she saw before he entered high school.
This year’s reversal “made him feel rejected as a human being,” she said.
Having socially transitioned in seventh grade when he cut his hair and asked to go by Ethan, Brignac’s peers have been confused to hear his feminine name now used.
He’s reminded every day that his state and school deny his identity. “It’s rough being called something I’m not,” said Brignac, who now avoids talking in class.
Queer young people have disproportionate rates of depression and mental illness. But a study of 129 transgender and gender nonconforming students found that having their identities affirmed decreases symptoms of severe depression. Being called preferred names and pronouns is correlated with a drop in suicidal thoughts by 29% and suicidal behavior by 56%, according to the study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health in 2018.
Refusing to use preferred names tells transgender and nonbinary students they’re unworthy of respect, said Johnathan Gooch of Equality Texas, a nonprofit that advocates for LGBTQ equality.
“It’s as if someone else picked a nickname for you that you didn’t want, a malicious nickname, that they repeatedly use despite the fact they know what you prefer to be called,” Gooch said.
Parental rights for all?
Some parents who support expelling discussions about queer identities from schools say SB 12 protects children from viewpoints that might spur them to question who they are.
Around three years ago, after Kevin Brooks’ then-middle school daughter returned from school in the Wylie district and said her friend used nonbinary pronouns, he responded: “Sweetheart, don’t buy into that foolishness.”
The army veteran thinks children are too young to learn about LGBTQ+ identities and that it confuses them to hear that gender and sexuality are spectrums, like some schools have taught.
“Why are you teaching these kids that are as young as 5 and 6 years old all this stuff that they don’t need to deal with?” Brooks said. “I told my son the other day, I wish you’d stay innocent till you’re 35 years old, because the stuff that’s going on in the world right now absolutely just, it not only mortifies me, it terrifies me. It just really pisses me off.”
Brooks hasn’t heard of teachers at Wylie discussing LGBTQ+ identities, but he’s terrified to imagine them pledging allegiance to a rainbow flag, which happened in a California classroom in 2021.
In May, Don Zimmerman participated in a protest against a transgender teacher at Cedar Ridge High School in the Round Rock district, where he lives and previously ran for the school board.
Students and at least one faculty member stood across the street with posters saying, “Y’all means all.” To Zimmerman, the faculty member’s presence is proof of schools “coaching children and encouraging them to embrace and publicly protest in favor of this transgender extremism.”
“The school is so hell bent on this agenda of promoting transgenderism and the LGBT lifestyle, …and the parents feel so powerless at stopping the public schools agenda that they go to the Legislature and get these laws passed,” said Zimmerman, who sent his third grader to private school to shield him from LGBTQ+-themed lessons.
Parents of transgender students say new policies complying with the so-called “parents’ bill of rights” are a slap in their face. Keene, Brignac’s stepmom, said policies against using gender-affirming names and pronouns pander to conservative views and hurt gender-queer children, who are 3.3% of youths ages 13-17 in the U.S.
Brignac’s biological mom told the Tribune she is now seeking to change her son’s legal name so he hears Ethan when he graduates.
“I fail to see the correlation between a parent asking that their child be called by their preferred name and pronouns and providing direct instruction on gender identity,” Keene said. “It’s about control, not about rights. And it’s also just blatant disregard for a person’s sense of self. And to do that to kids is unconscionable.”
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