Texas Senate Bill 12, or SB 12,  passed the 89th legislature June 20 and went into effect Sep. 1. The bill prevents school districts from authorizing or sponsoring a student club based on gender identity or sexual orientation, prohibits any district employee from assisting a student with a social transition, and a ban on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) duties. 

SB 12, in its current form, is a bill that will end up doing more harm than good to both students and faculty who identify as LGBTQIA+ or who can be considered to be an ethnic minority. 

In Texas, 145 of the 521 hate crimes committed within 2023 were motivated by sexual orientation, gender or gender identity. SB 12, rather than providing a safe place for students that fall within these categories to relax with school clubs, decides to instead revoke this safe place and force students to seek safety elsewhere. In addition, SB 12 makes sure that faculty can not assist students in transition while providing no explanation as to what classifies as assistance. It could mean that even saying a student’s pronouns or new name is classified as assistance, or it could not. SB 12 looks at an already persecuted group and makes the decision to remove the safe places and forces the  people who assist them to look the other way via vague wording and descriptions. 

Like gender identity, gender and sexual orientation, a large number of hate crimes in 2023, specifically 287, were committed on the basis of race, ethnicity, or ancestry. SB 12 also decides to look at this persecuted group and make it harder to combat this persecution by removing the ability for training and/or programs to reference race, color or ethnicity. This, by extension, would make it impossible for any training and/or programs that reference racism to occur as these would require race, ethnicity or ancestry to be talked about. This shows yet another example of this bill forcing people who combat racism within schools to look the other way via vague wording and descriptions.

If someone were to say that SB 12 doesn’t directly state that supporting a student’s pronouns or having meetings regarding topics like racism are banned, they would be completely correct. However,  if someone were to say that SB 12 won’t result in the banning of these topics because it doesn’t explicitly state them, they would be wrong. A great example of this is the Jim Crow Laws within the early to mid 20th century. Literary tests were almost exclusively used on voters of color because of grandfather laws despite nothing  being stated about being exclusive to them. Poll taxes were done almost exactly the same, and “Good Character”  clauses were so vague that a bad character could simply be someone with the wrong skin tone.  As shown by the aforementioned examples, a law can harm groups of people without explicitly naming them. The vague wording of SB 12 will lead to pronouns not being respected and training on racism being nonexistent, regardless of these being directly mentioned or not. 

Under the false umbrella of “protecting the children,” the state wants to make sure that children stay within the mold they have crafted for them by enacting this bill. It shuts down the discussion of hard, yet important topics to both children and educators while also removing the safe places and supporting faculty that these already persecuted children need.