Trans kids are already at risk of suicide. How will new rules in Texas affect them?

As policies targeting transgender students in North Texas schools and statewide are set to take effect, parents, students and advocates worry about how those new rules will affect trans and nonbinary students’ mental health.

Schools in the Fort Worth area are implementing newly adopted rules regarding which bathrooms trans students can use, which choirs they can sing in and how teachers and classmates are required to refer to them. And across Texas, trans kids and their parents worry about a new law that cuts off access to gender-affirming care.

Researchers say transgender students are already more likely to consider suicide because of the hostile social environment many face at school and elsewhere. Advocates for transgender kids say new policies will only make matters worse.

Keller ISD adopts bathroom, pronoun policies for trans students

Last month, the Keller Independent School District’s board voted to approve a policy requiring students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond with their sex as assigned at birth. Under the policy, schools may make accommodations, including allowing students to use single-stall bathrooms.

Trustees also adopted a policy stating that district employees may not “promote, encourage, or require the use of pronouns that are inconsistent with a student’s or other person’s biological sex.” The policy leaves trans and nonbinary students little recourse if a classmate or teacher intentionally refers to them using the wrong pronouns.

Days before the meeting, the ACLU of Texas sent a letter to members of the board, as well as Superintendent Rick Westfall, warning them that the policy violates federal law and runs contrary to guidance from nonpartisan education groups, including the Texas Association of School Boards. In the letter, ACLU lawyers argued that it is “deeply invasive and unlawful” for district officials to question students’ sexual characteristics.

The new policies in Keller mirror similar rules put in place last year in the Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District. Under that policy, when a parent or student requests that the student be referred to using pronouns that match the student’s gender identity, the matter is up to the teacher’s “discretion.”

The Keller ISD meeting’s public comment section stretched on for more than an hour and a half, with speakers on both sides of the issue lining up to give two-minute testimonies. District resident Fran Rhodes thanked the board for enacting the policy, saying the bathroom restrictions were necessary to keep students safe at school. Regarding the policy on pronouns, Rhodes argued that no one should be required to use language that runs contrary to their beliefs.

“Everyone can make that decision for themselves, but district policy should not force the use of specified pronouns on anyone,” she said.

Thorn Hawthorne, a trans woman who was a student at Central High School in Keller ISD in the early 2010s, urged the board not to approve the policy. Hawthorne told trustees that deliberately misgendering trans people is a form of hate speech, and she worries that allowing teachers and students to do so with no repercussions will embolden people who want to do harm to trans and nonbinary people.

Shortly after the board adopted the policy, Marc Weaver, a theater teacher at Independence Elementary School in Keller ISD, posted a petition online urging the board to reverse the policies. By Friday morning, the petition had garnered more than 17,000 signatures, though it wasn’t clear how many of those came from within the district.

In the petition, Weaver wrote that policies targeting transgender students can have academic repercussions, including increased absenteeism and a heightened risk of dropping out of school.

“It is crucial for KISD to prioritize the well-being and success of all its students by implementing policies that protect transgender individuals from discrimination,” Weaver wrote. “By doing so, we can foster an environment where every student feels valued and respected.”

The new rules in Keller ISD represented just one of several policy changes targeting trans and nonbinary students in North Texas and statewide in June, which is Pride Month. Days before the Keller board meeting, the board of directors at the Fort Worth Academy of Fine Arts, a public charter school in southwest Fort Worth, approved a policy barring students from singing in choirs that didn’t correspond with their sex as listed on their birth certificates. The decision followed more than three hours of public comment by teachers, parents and students, as well as community members with no connection to the school.

Also last month, Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill barring transgender and nonbinary children in Texas from accessing puberty blockers and hormone therapies. Under the law, children who are already taking the drugs are to be weaned off them in a “safe and medically appropriate” way. But researchers from the medical schools at Harvard University and Yale University told the medical news website Stat News in May that there’s no medically appropriate way of doing so.

On Wednesday, a group of families and medical professionals sued to block the law before it goes into effect on Sept. 1. Attorneys with the ACLU of Texas, which Is one of several organizations representing the plaintiffs, argued that the ban violates the Texas Constitution because it overrides the judgment of patients, parents and doctors.

Trans kids are more likely to consider suicide, research suggests

In a study published in 2021, researchers from the National Institutes of Health found that LGBTQ adolescents were more than twice as likely to attempt suicide compared to their straight, cisgender peers. They also tended to become suicidal at a younger age and move more quickly from suicidal ideation to developing a plan to kill themselves than their straight, cisgender peers, according to the study.

Researchers wrote that LGBTQ people are at increased risk for mental health problems in general, and suicidality in particular, “because they face a more hostile and stressful social environment characterized by stigma, prejudice, and discrimination.”

But research suggests that teachers and school leaders can mitigate some of that harm by showing support for transgender students. In a study conducted in 2018, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin found that the risk of depression and suicide drops drastically when trans youths are allowed to use their chosen names at home, work and school.

In a previous study, UT researchers found that trans adolescents have suicidal thoughts at nearly twice the rate of their peers, and about one in three reported that they were considering suicide. In the 2018 paper, researchers wrote that when trans students had even a single context where they were allowed to use their preferred names, there was a 29% drop in suicidal thoughts. Researchers wrote that allowing trans students to use their chosen names at school is a simple way that districts can show support for those students.

Trans former Keller student says she was mistreated at school

Hawthorne, the former Keller ISD student, told the Star-Telegram that she was badly mistreated by teachers and other students while she was in school. After she came out as trans during her freshman year, Hawthorne wasn’t allowed to use either the boys or the girls bathrooms, she said. A few teachers were willing to find some accommodation, she said, but others weren’t. Once, when she left class to use the bathroom, a group of teachers and school security guards stopped her before she got there. She later found out that school staff members had been watching her on security cameras, she said.

“I was a child. I was 14 or 15 years old,” she said. “I was very small, very non-threatening, but people just did not want to share space with a trans person.”

Hawthorne said she had a little recourse when other students mistreated her. In one case, a classmate grabbed her cell phone out of her hand and threw it across the room, breaking it. The student who threw the phone didn’t get into trouble, Hawthorne said. Instead, the teacher punished Hawthorne, she said. In another case, another student hit her. She told the campus administrator, who said Hawthorne must have done something to provoke the other student, she said.

Hawthorne said those interactions are examples of what trans people encounter every day. She said there’s a dangerous misconception that all trans people are predatory and inherently dangerous, especially to children.

“That’s not how being trans works,” she said. “We’re just born, we figure out that we’re trans, and then usually our life falls apart after that because of the way people react to it.”

As that treatment continued, Hawthorne’s grades began to drop. When Hawthorne was 17, her mother pulled her out of school. Hawthorne took the GED exam and passed.

In an emailed statement, a Keller ISD spokesman said the district couldn’t comment on Hawthorne’s experience. But school staff members are trained on how to intervene in cases of bullying, he said, and the district’s student code of conduct and employee handbook outline consequences for bullying.

While teachers and campus leaders are no longer allowed to require students to refer to their trans and nonbinary classmates using the correct pronouns, the district encourages any student who feels harmed by the actions of others to get support from a school counselor or campus administrator, he said.

School can be hard to navigate, says nonbinary Azle student

Beatrice, an Azle High School student who is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, said most of the hostility they’ve felt at school comes from adults, not other students. Beatrice asked only to be identified by their first name because of concerns about state investigations targeting parents who provide gender-affirming care to trans children. Some teachers are supportive, they said, but others aren’t. So it can be hard for LGBTQ students to know where they can turn when they need to talk to an adult.

The Azle Independent School District doesn’t have a district-wide policy regarding which bathrooms students should use, instead leaving the matter up to campus leaders to decide, a district spokeswoman said. At Azle High School, trans and nonbinary students are allowed to use a teachers’ bathroom.

Beatrice said they think that solution is generally a fair compromise. Beatrice can’t go into either the boys’ or girls’ bathrooms without risking a confrontation, they said, so a teachers’ bathroom feels like the safest option. As the district builds new schools in the future, they’d like to see single-stall gender-neutral bathrooms included in the plans, but they acknowledged it would be complicated to add them to buildings that were built decades ago.

But recently, a friend who is a trans girl tried to use a girls’ bathroom at her school instead of the teachers’ restroom she typically uses. A teacher who knew the girl before she transitioned stopped her and insisted she use the boys’ bathroom, Beatrice said. The interaction left the girl feeling dysphoric, Beatrice said. Gender dysphoria is the physical and emotional distress that some trans and nonbinary people feel stemming from the conflict between the sex they were assigned at birth and the gender with which they identify.

Although they weren’t directly involved in the incident, Beatrice said it still left them, and every other trans and nonbinary student at school, feeling tense. There’s a lot of hatred in the world directed at trans and nonbinary people, Beatrice said, and situations like that make them feel like they aren’t safe at school.

“You feel frowned upon,” they said. “You feel disrespected.”

Beatrice said they’d also like to see the district find a way to list trans students’ preferred names in student records so that substitute teachers know the correct name to call during roll. Being called by their birth name, which is often known as their deadname, can be a source of stress and anxiety for many trans and nonbinary people. While some people may address trans people by their deadnames as an act of aggression, Beatrice said they understand substitutes are just using the only names listed on the class roll. But it still creates an awkward situation they said could easily be avoided.

Beatrice said they’ve heard others at school and elsewhere in the community say that LGBTQ+ issues are an uncomfortable topic. But they say those topics shouldn’t be off limits just because they make some people feel uncomfortable. Teachers especially need to understand those issues because they need to be able to work with gay and trans students, they said.

Effects of school experience can follow trans kids for years

Hawthorne said the effects of her experience in high school have followed her in the decade since she dropped out. She feels uncomfortable in a classroom setting, she said. She still expects to be punished when she hasn’t done anything wrong, she said, and she doesn’t expect teachers and classmates to take her seriously.

That’s made it difficult to pursue a college degree, she said. She started the first year of an associate’s degree program about a half dozen times, then had to leave each time, she said. Ten years after leaving high school, she’s now an undergrad at the University of Iowa.

“I’m currently working on my bachelor’s degree at 27, when most people would be finishing their postgraduate degree,” she said.

Thinking back on the end of her high school career, Hawthorne thinks her mother made the best decision she could have by pulling her out of school. Considering the direction her grades were headed, she said it’s unlikely she would have graduated even if she’d stayed.

But even if it was the best decision, it’s one that continues to affect her a decade later. Hiring decisions and college application processes are generally opaque, so she can’t know for sure. But she suspects that she’s been turned down for job and school opportunities because she has a GED instead of a high school diploma — something she says wouldn’t be an issue if teachers and administrators at her school had been more supportive.

“People will look at someone who didn’t graduate high school and just make a lot of assumptions,” she said. “...I just wonder how different things would be right now had I not been so mistreated and so ignored by school administration.”

If you or someone you know is considering suicide, dial 988 or text SAVE to 741741 to be connected with crisis support services.