Senate OKs bill to penalize schools that don’t tell parents when kids confide they are transgender

The Tennessee Senate on Thursday approved a bill that will require public schools to tell parents that their child is identifying as transgender.

The bill by west Tennessee Republican Sen. Paul Rose and Rep. Mary Littleton, R-Dickson requires teachers to inform school administrators if a student has confided they plan to transition to a different gender or wish to be called by different pronouns.

In turn, the school’s administrator must inform the parents. Failure to do so, or to give false or misleading information about a student’s gender identity, would subject the school to lawsuits from the parents and legal action by the Tennessee Attorney General, according to the text of the bill.

“This is simply about parental rights,” Rose said Thursday. “It’s really not any more than that. As a parent I certainly would want to know any things going on with my child that went beyond what I believe was correct.”

Sen. Raumesh Akbari, D-Memphis, called the bill a license to discriminate against transgender kids.

“Being a teenager, being in the school system is hard enough,” Akbari said. “To put this additional barrier on them – where you have to report as if it’s some sort of crime….if someone feels that they have a different gender identity, they want to be called by a different name, I certainly think that’s not something that requires this level of scrutiny.”

Forcing teachers to share disclosures made by students about their gender identity will damage trust between kids and educators, Sen. Jeff Yarbro, D-Nashville, who noted some kids don’t have trusted parents at home, including the disproportionate share of unhoused youth who are LGBTQ.

“This puts our teachers and guidance counselors in a genuinely untenable position to be trusted and even sometimes loving,” Yarbro said.

“It’s not like the teacher can start the person on some sort of treatment. They’re just trying to accommodate them in the building and we’re requiring that be reported to parents? I don’t know when we decided that children became property.”

The bill will be heard next in the House of Representatives.