Pronoun rules made permanent by Oklahoma Board of Education, despite looming lawsuit

Despite a pending lawsuit in federal court, the state Board of Education on Thursday made permanent a rule change that would prohibit school districts and local schools from altering sex or gender designations in past student records without the board’s authorization.

With only four members present for a regular monthly meeting — barely enough for a quorum on what’s currently a six-person board — the proposal passed 4-0. The board approved a similar temporary rule on Sept. 28 and a public hearing was held on Dec. 18. The board had been scheduled to vote three days after that hearing to make the rules permanent, but instead deferred action to this month.

Also on Dec. 21, board members — including state schools Superintendent Ryan Walters — were served with a lawsuit filed by the Oklahoma Equality Law Center and the Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice on behalf of a Moore Public Schools student — referred to in the lawsuit as “J. Doe” — whose request to change their pronouns in school records was unanimously denied by the board during its October meeting.

That case has since been moved from Cleveland County District Court into U.S. District Court in Oklahoma City, where it’s been assigned to District Judge David Russell. No hearing dates are set.

“When appropriate, we will seek an injunction,” said Joshua Payton, one of the attorneys for the Oklahoma Equality Law Center.

What does the new rule require?

According to a rule impact statement on the Oklahoma State Department of Education's website, the purpose of the rule change “is to prevent alteration of sex or gender designations in historical school records. The state Education Department has received notice that some students changing their sex or gender with parental consent are also seeking to remove prior records that accurately reflected their sex or gender during prior years. The rule will provide districts with clear authority to protect their historical records.”

Walters offered a full-throated defense of the rule change after Thursday’s board meeting.

“We’re not going to tolerate the woke Olympics in our schools, left-wing ideologues trying to push in this radical gender theory,” Walters said. “It is the most radical concept we’ve ever come across in K-12 education, that you can be gender fluid (or) change your gender constantly.”

He said, without providing examples, that “we’ve seen issues in schools where teachers have been targeted by individuals claiming that, ‘You’re not changing my gender or my pronouns every day.’ Look — we need to be worried about educating kids, so we’re not going to worry about what games the left continues to try to play with our kids.

“Frankly, it’s even more sinister than that. This is a war from the Biden administration on traditional values, family values, our state. You continue to see it from President (Joe) Biden as he continues to ratchet up these unbelievably aggressive measures against states. They have been very aggressive with us and we’re going to continue to fight back.”

Pronoun cases involve Oklahoma students from Moore, Cushing

The two cases regarding gender identity brought before the state Board of Education came from Oklahoma students. In addition to the Moore student, a student attending Cushing Public Schools also had a request to alter pronouns rejected by the board in October, despite court orders from state judges requiring the districts to make the changes.

“We are disappointed the board has continued to engage in executive overreach by passing invalid rules for which they lack authority,” Payton said. “The board’s continued intentional discrimination against children based on their sex, rather than focus on the business of managing our schools to be top-tier learning centers, exemplifies how off track and out of control this executive arm of the state currently is.”

For the rules to go into effect, they still would need to be approved by the state Legislature and the governor.

Board takes its most aggressive licensing actions since Walters became superintendent

In other business, the board voted to revoke the teaching licenses of eight people and suspend the licenses of six other teachers, pending a revocation hearing. A search of the state Education Department website showed that the combined 14 licensing actions taken Thursday were three more than the board took in all of 2023, which was Walters’ first year as superintendent. Walters has claimed that in 2023, the department removed 14 teaching certificates since he took office in January 2023 and filed for 17 more to be removed. A search of the state Education Department website shows that during the eight years in which Walters’ predecessor, Joy Hofmeister, was superintendent, there were nearly 200 license revocations.

In a special board meeting earlier this month, Walters specifically mentioned four potential suspension or revocation cases that were in process, involving the Shawnee, Western Heights, Kingfisher and Ringling districts. All but the Western Heights cases involve former athletic coaches whose legal issues have been frequently in the news. None of those coaches were included in Thursday’s licensing actions.

“You’re going to continue to see us act very swiftly on these sexual predators in the classroom,” Walters said. “This is the most aggressive action the state’s ever taken. We’re going to keep doing that. We’re going to keep making sure kids are safe.”

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Ryan Walters, Oklahoma board of education approves pronoun ban