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Editor's note: The names of all of the students and parents in this story are pseudonyms to protect their privacy.
After dinner on a recent school night, 16-year-old Ace sat in a dining room chair while their mom, Mara, brushed and braided their hair.
It’s a familiar ritual – something they do every time Ace performs with their high school dance team.
“You do all the mom things,” Ace said.
“I do all the mom things,” Mara agreed.
Ace loves being on the dance team. It’s an important part of who they are. But, this school year, another important part of their identity is being quashed.
“When everyone knows that you go by a different name, and no one can call you that, you get a lot of looks,” Ace said.
Ace is nonbinary, and everyone they know has called them by their chosen, gender-neutral name, since they were 9.
“I was a very, like, pretty pink princess little child, but I don't think I ever really wanted to be a girl,” Ace said. “It didn't fit.”
Ace’s preference is for their pronouns to be switched between she and they, but they said they’re used to being called she.
“I live in Texas, so I don't exactly expect that much,” Ace said.
But, this year, their teachers have been told they can no longer call Ace by their chosen name. And that’s really getting under their skin.
Names and pronouns
In August, Ace’s school district, North East Independent School District in San Antonio, told employees that because of Senate Bill 12, they can only call students by names and pronouns that match the sex listed on their birth certificate.
For Ace, that means some teachers avoid calling them anything at all.
“They'll be like, ‘It's either your last name or I just don't call on you.’ Or, like, ‘If I need you, I'll point at you.’ So, in certain classes, I'm just on high alert, because I don't know what the teacher will be feeling that day,” Ace said. “It’s really dehumanizing.”
North East ISD Superintendent Sean Maika said the district is just trying to follow the law.
“These aren't things that we're saying. We're following the law,” Maika said. “Oftentimes I've referred to it as the perfect crime, because a law has been passed and it looks like our fingerprints are all over it, but we're just following the law.”
Maika said the district issued guidance on pronouns and names in order to protect their staff. Another new law makes it easier for parents to sue teachers and librarians.
“The parent could sue them. … And then sanction their certification, and all sorts of things. So, there's some pretty big consequences to that,” Maika said.
North East is basing its guidance on names on a section of SB 12 that bans school employees from assisting with social transitioning.
But Ace’s mom, Mara, said that’s not what teachers would be doing if they called Ace by their name.
“The truth of the matter is, I don't think of my child as transitioning,” Mara said. “Their identity is established.”
As Mara spoke, Ace struck a pose, with their hands framing their face, as if to say “Ta-da.”
“Mom, I’m not a girl,” Ace joked, as if it were brand new information.
Parents' rights
Supporters of SB 12 say it gives parents more rights. In a statement earlier this year, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said the law "reasserts parents as the primary decision-makers in their child’s public school education by eliminating discriminatory Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion ideology in public schools.”
But Mara said that doesn’t match her experience.
“This isn't about parent rights, because nobody asked me, and I'm the parent,” Mara said. “And it's not about making it easier for teachers, because the teachers are apologizing to the students.”
North East says their staff can’t call Ace by their chosen name even with Mara’s permission.
Attorney Brian Klosterboer with the ACLU of Texas questions that position.
“That is nowhere to be seen in the law itself, but because the social transition ban piece is so broad and vague, it has a massive chilling effect where schools and educators are nervous to even acknowledge the existence of transgender students,” Klosterboer said.
Klosterboer is the lead attorney in a lawsuit challenging SB 12. It argues that the whole section on social transitioning is unconstitutional and should be eliminated.
Klosterboer thinks that districts that interpret it like North East does are on particularly shaky legal ground.
“Because now they're discriminating against their students and disregarding the wishes of the parents, which are specifically in other parts of SB 12 supposed to be followed,” Klosterboer said.
Other districts
North East isn’t the only district interpreting SB 12 this way. Klosterboer said the ACLU of Texas named Plano ISD as a plaintiff in their lawsuit in part because Plano gave their staff similar instructions.
But the Texas Education Agency hasn’t issued any guidance telling districts to interpret SB 12 this way, and, so far, many districts haven’t gone that far.
“I haven't had any teacher that has had a problem with it, nor did I last year when I first started transitioning,” said 13-year-old Margaret in late August.
Margaret is in 8th grade at Northside ISD in San Antonio. On the first day back from Labor Day, Margaret said one of her teachers called her by her birth name for the first time since she started going by a different name and pronouns last year.
It was something she was bracing for, because she had heard about SB 12 and how North East ISD was interpreting it.
“It's just makes me a little angry,” Margaret said. “There's no real reason why you should care (what I’m called).”
Margaret’s mom, Julie, said the authors of SB 12 seem to think that just talking about LGBTQ+ topics will make students queer. But she said her daughter has a mind of her own.
“We call her our future lawyer, because she will debate and negotiate and she will never back down if she feels like she's right,” Julie said. “There's absolutely no way someone could make her trans.”
Northside officials told TPR they still haven’t adopted a policy on social transitioning. But Margaret’s teacher may have been afraid, and decided to make the change on their own.
Student clubs
And SB 12 is affecting Margaret in other ways, too. Last year, she started a student club called Just Be Yourself.
“But because it's apparently too DEI, we have to change it to the Kindness Club,” Margaret said.
SB 12 bans student clubs “based on sexual orientation or gender identity.”
Margaret said most of her club’s members are queer or allies, but really the club is just about being inclusive.
"All we would do is sit there, listen to music and hang out," said the 8th grader.
Still, the name of her club was important to her, because it mirrored her decision to changer her name and pronouns last year.
“You are what you are. I don't think anybody could change that or tell you: 'You're this, and I'm going to force you to be this.’ That’s not how it works,” Margaret said.
The ACLU of Texas is asking the court to block four sections of SB 12, including the ban on LGBTQ student clubs, and the prohibition on assisting with social transitioning.
But it will be at least several weeks until a judge even considers the request, and in the meantime, SB 12 is the law in Texas. What that means for students depends on the district and the teacher. What it means for teachers depends on if a parent decides to sue.
Safety concerns
Regardless of how the lawsuit plays out, both Julie and Mara worry about the cumulative effect of laws like SB 12 when it comes to their children's safety.
"It scares me, because I feel like this is the first step," Julie said. "I hear rumors that, you know, they might be prosecuting parents, and so I feel like we'll probably either have to go into hiding on it, or move somewhere where it it won't be an issue."
Mara is afraid it gives prejudiced people permission to act out.
“History has shown us that we don't dehumanize for just no reason,” Mara said. “Dehumanization comes as a means to an end, and that's the frightening part to me.”
16-year-old Ace said it feels like the clock is turning back to when they came out in elementary school.
“I got rocks thrown at me, big, heavy ones from a playground,” Ace said.
Even though Ace and their mom are worried about what the law means for the future of trans and nonbinary kids in Texas, and even though Ace finds it jarring and dehumanizing to be called by their birth name, Ace said they have no plans to change schools.
It’s their junior year, and Ace doesn’t want to leave the dance team.
“It's less of I don't want to and more like I can't,” Ace said. “I don't know what will happen if I leave everything behind, but I have seen myself without roots before, and I don't want to take that risk, and I think that's the same for a lot of other people.”
