WASHINGTON — A divided House approved legislation Friday that would require schools to make library catalogs and curricula public, and obtain parental consent before complying with a student’s request to change their identifying pronouns from gender, as part of a Republican effort to gain political advantage from a raging debate on contentious social issues.
The bill, passed almost entirely along party lines in a vote of 213 to 208, is a centerpiece of the Republican agenda that its sponsors call the Parents’ Bill of Rights Act. It has no chance of passing the Democratic-controlled Senate or being signed by President Biden, whose advisers say he endangers transgender children without actually supporting parents.
Its passage reflected the latest attempt by House Republicans to focus on issues that buoy the right-wing base by promoting what they call common-sense changes that could appeal to voters across the ideological spectrum. Republican supporters describe the bill as a measure “to ensure that parental rights are honored and protected in the nation’s public schools,” arguing that the goal is to give students the best possible learning experience.
“Sending a child to public school does not nullify parental rights at the door,” said Rep. Erin Houchin, R-Ind. “It gives power back to parents.”
Democrats argue instead that the bill could create a legal basis for school censorship and book bans, and would create divisions based on sexual orientation and gender identity. During the House debate this week, some Democrats called the legislation the “Parent Policy Act,” calling it extreme and a vehicle for bringing political battles over social issues into the classroom by trying to codify the rights of the parents that already exist.
“This bill does not give parents any more rights than they already have,” said Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, D-Pennsylvania. Instead, she said, she provided a “one-size-fits-all approach across the country, assuming the size that fits is a right-wing straitjacket.”
Debate over the measure heated up as Republicans and Democrats sparred over its implications, carefully tackling some of the most tense and emotional issues facing children and parents.
A divided congress
The 118th Congress is underway, with Republicans in control of the House and Democrats in the Senate.
For Republicans, many of whom have been outright opposed to transgender rights, it was an opportunity to highlight fears that many parents have expressed publicly about how schools handle gender issuesand to address broader fears among his conservative supporters about creeping indoctrination while providing momentum for states that are passing similar bills.
In emotional speeches in the House of Representatives, Democrats said that hidden under the seemingly innocuous language of the 30-page bill were policies that would endanger LGBT children. And they warned that such legislation would make it easier for right-wing groups to campaign against books they wanted banned, which could saddle school boards with lawsuits if they didn’t comply.
The bill would require schools to alert parents if a student wants to change their pronouns, or wants to change the bathroom or locker room they use at school. If a school does not obtain parental consent for such changes, it could lose federal funds. Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Colorado Republican, won inclusion of an amendment requiring schools to alert parents if a student whose biological sex is male participates in a sport designated for women and girls.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said the effect would be to “require schools to exclude trans, non-binary, and LGBT youth, even if it would put those youth at risk.” She added that “for so many abused children, school is their only safe place to be.”
Rep. Mark Takano, a California Democrat and a former teacher, shared his own experiences of children facing harsh punishment at home after teachers reported students to parents.
“When a home is not safe for LGBT children, schools become their safe place,” he said, noting that the bill would push “good teachers to do bad things” and force “children to go back the closet”. It is a fundamental invasion of privacy that puts children at risk.”
Republicans, in response, insisted that the bill would do no such thing.
“It does not require any teacher to disclose private conversations or any conversation about sexual orientation,” said Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-North Carolina.
She said it would simply require a school to alert parents if a student wanted to change their pronouns or wanted to use a bathroom or locker room designated for a different sex.
Many of the arguments in favor of the bill were phrased as criticism of teachers’ unions, which Republicans say were improperly pushing their own agenda at the expense of parents. Ms Foxx said they had “worked to push progressive politics into classrooms while keeping parents in the dark.”
Republicans first seized on the theme of progressive politics seemingly running rampant in public schools in 2021, after former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia said during a campaign for his old special election office: “I don’t think the Parents should tell schools what they should teach.”
His Republican rival, Glenn Youngkin, seized on the comment and used the issue, which resonated with some parents who were angry about the way schools responded to the pandemic, to propel himself to victory, winning the governorship later that year.
The issue has also become important to Republicans in other states. In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis pushed through the “Parental Rights in Education” Act, which has led to a ban on books like “And Tango Makes Three,” an award-winning children’s book about the true story of a penguin from the same sex. couple. This week, his administration moved to expand a controversial policy that prohibits classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity, seeking to expand it to all grades.
In Texas, the state legislature passed a law shaping how teachers approach instruction that touches on race and gender, leading to hundreds of books taken from the library shelves.
On Capitol Hill, Republicans defended their bill as a simple law that would help provide the best learning experiences for students, mandate two parent-teacher conferences a year, and force schools to publish their budgets and curricula. in public.
“They are afraid that the parents might come in,” Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican, said of the Democratic opposition. “They are afraid of sunlight coming into the classroom.”
During three days of debate, in committees and on the House floor, fending off Democratic attacks, Republicans said they were not in favor of banning books.
Mr Roy said that “no one wants to put out books on Rosa Parks”. But he singled out “Flamer,” a graphic novel about a teenager struggling with his identity as a Catholic and a Boy Scout coming to terms with the fact that he’s gay. Mr. Roy described it as a “graphic book about young people performing sexual acts at summer camp” and said it was the kind of book that didn’t belong in public schools.
In response, Democrats noted that the American Library Association opposes the legislation, considering it a catalyst for more bans and censorship of booksand said that this was one of the central objectives of the legislation.
“This is about banning books,” said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Massachusetts. “This bill will be put together by far-right groups and will be used to threaten schools with legal action if they don’t take books off the shelves. They want to ban books about black and brown people and they want to ban books about LGBTQI+ people.”
Ms. Scanlon called the legislation a “stunning act of federal overreach that would essentially nationalize our education system.” And she pointed out that the libertarian Cato Institute expressed reservations about the legislationalleging that the bill “suffers from a fundamental defect: it is not constitutional.”
Five Republicans voted against the bill: Representatives Andy Biggs of Arizona, Ken Buck of Colorado, Matt Gaetz of Florida, Mike Lawler of New York and Matt Rosendale of Montana. Republicans hold a four-seat majority in the House, but the bill was able to pass despite defections due to absentee Democrats.
The White House said in an administration policy statement that it did not support the bill because “the bill doesn’t really help parents keep their children in school” and puts gay, lesbian and transgender at higher risk.
