She told a story about how stickers supporting LGBTQ+ pride, showing rainbows or flags, were scraped off classroom doors in her school without an explanation. “Teachers are being vilified,” Elle Caldon of Dallas County, Texas, said. Teenagers from Texas, Michigan and Ohio told House lawmakers that the constant attacks from right-wing advocacy groups and lack of support from school administrative officials are taking a toll on their mental health and affecting their education. “Laws like Florida’s officially named ‘Parental Rights in Education’ seek to erase (LGBTQ+ people’s) existence for our youngest of children, who by nature are already more open to learning about diversity and accepting one another despite their differences, and definitely deny parents like me a safe learning environment for my children,” Cousins said. One of the witnesses, Jennifer Cousins, a mother from Orlando, said the legislation would mean her children would be prevented from speaking about their older sibling, who is nonbinary, in the classroom.

The House Oversight and Reform Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Subcommittee held the hearing to examine the impact of new state laws that bar educators from discussing American history, race and LGBTQ+ issues in K-12 public classrooms.įlorida recently passed a “Don’t Say Gay” bill that prohibits discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation in public classrooms in kindergarten through third grade and allows it only when age-appropriate among older kids. “To be crystal clear, this is about disrupting and destroying public education,” James Whitfield, a former principal in Texas and one of the witnesses, told lawmakers. House members during a Thursday hearing that their right to talk about race and LGBTQ+ issues in public schools is being silenced due to an onslaught of new state laws as well as pressure on school boards from right-wing advocates.

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