House Republicans Pass National “Don’t Say Trans” Bill
Students would also be prevented from changing their preferred name, pronouns, or gender marker.
Featured image: U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg, a Republican who supported the anti-trans bill. Photo by Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Republicans in the House of Representatives passed a bill on Wednesday that would strip federal dollars from schools that update students’ pronouns, gender markers, or preferred name without parent consent, as well as enact a “don’t say trans” rule nationwide.
The piece of legislation, called the Stopping Indoctrination and Protecting Kids Act, H.R. 2616, uses definitions of gender from the Trump administration’s anti-trans executive orders. It passed with a vote of 217 to 198. Eight Democrats in the House voted in support of the anti-LGBTQ+ bill. They were U.S. Reps. Vicente Gonzalez and Henry Cuellar of Texas, Don Davis of North Carolina, Cleo Fields of Louisiana, Laura Gillen of New York, Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington state, and Eugene Vindman of Virginia.
If the bill becomes law, it would mean any school receiving federal funding would be required to out trans students or lose funding, according to critics. Schools would not be able to update a student’s pronouns, gender marker, or preferred name. Permission from parents would be required to change a student’s use of a locker room or bathroom to align with their gender identity.
There are no exceptions made in the bill.
During debate on the House floor, Michigan GOP U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg, chair of the House Committee on Education and Workforce, said the bill “takes monumental strides to restore parental rights and educational sanity,” News From the States reports.
Virginia U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott condemned the bill on the House floor. The ranking member of the committee said the bill would “impose a rigid federal mandate that ignores context, disregards students’ safety and prioritizes politics over people.”
He said the bill would prevent any recognition of the existence of trans people and would ban books with trans subjects. It “bars any discussion of transgender people or topics in the classroom,” he said.
LGBTQ+ rights groups called out the bill.
“Every child in this country deserves the same opportunity to thrive as their peers, and that includes transgender students,” said Mike Zamore, National Director for Policy & Government Affairs for the ACLU, in a statement. “Instead of strengthening that basic promise for all students, a narrow majority of the House opted to single out and endanger some of the most vulnerable youth in our schools today. This bill doesn’t create a safe learning environment for anyone — quite the opposite — but it does inject politics into every classroom across the country, which harms education for all students. Censorship and discrimination have no place in our schools, and we call on the Senate to reject this bill.”
U.S. Rep. Mark Takano of California, the chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, blasted the measure.
“I spent 24 years as an educator where I worked with hundreds of high school students and their parents. Most children go to their parents when they need help or are struggling — including transgender children — but not all parents are accepting,” he said in a statement. “The forced outing provision of this bill puts teachers in an impossible situation by requiring them to out trans kids to their parents in certain situations — even if the teacher knows the student will likely face physical abuse.”
The bill now moves to the Senate.
