New NC law on parents and schools begins shaky rollout. Opponents and supporters aren't happy

Transgender or nonbinary students — whose gender identity doesn’t match the sex they were assigned at birth — may ask to go by a different name or pronoun. But students who merely wish to go by a nickname — such as “Jon” instead of “Jonathan” — also fall under the law, which states that notification is required for “any changes in name,” according to attorneys advising local school boards.

What parents can expect under NC's new parents' law for schools

“A lot of it is open to interpretation,” said Anne Sutkowski-Hemstreet, executive director of the Rainbow Collective for Change, an LGBTQ+ advocacy organization in Durham.

For example, because the law limits education on sexuality, teachers and principals are removing books from kindergarten through fourth-grade classrooms that may contain the subject. But teachers at one school might allow books that another school might prohibit, she said. Those might include books that feature gay characters that Sutkowski-Hemstreet argues aren’t about sexuality, such as “Mama and Mommy and Me in the Middle” by Nina LaCour, about a child processing the absence of one of her two moms when she leaves for a work trip.

School systems haven’t made clear enough rules for following the law, Sutkowsk-Hemstreet said.

“They don't have those procedures in place, or they don't hold anyone accountable to those procedures,” she said.

Inconsistency isn’t necessarily new with this law, Sutkowski-Hemstreet said. Schools have treated name-change requests differently for transgender students before, with some schools declining to use new names or pronouns for students, even when their parents make the request themselves.

Differing translations of the new law into school board policies have frustrated supporters of the law, too.

Tami Fitzgerald, executive director of the North Carolina Values Coalition, said some school boards are fleshing out their policies in ways she believes contradict the state law.

Orange County Schools and Buncombe County Schools, for instance, now have policies that instruct staff to consult first with students or counselors before notifying parents of a request to change a student’s name or pronoun.

Indeed, the law makes allowances for teachers to withhold information if they believe disclosure would result in abuse or neglect.

Nonetheless, Fitzgerald says Orange and Buncombe are skirting the law, adding an extra step not intended by the law that could essentially give schools a way around complying.

The Buncombe County school board’s policy says the extra step is meant to learn what concerns the student may have about their parents’ reaction and notes those concerns must be balanced with state and federal laws. The Orange County school board’s new gender support regulation repeatedly states that notification is required for any name or pronoun changes, while also requiring principals to consult with the school counselor or director of student services before notifying parents.

LGBTQ+ advocates argue that consultation allows schools to learn about whether the child would be at risk of neglect or abuse if an unsupportive family found out their child had a different gender identity. That could protect a child from being kicked out of their house, abused by a parent or bullied by a sibling, they say.

“The absolute right of a parent to know about a name or pronoun change is spelled out in this law,” Fitzgerald said. “And this is important because parents need to know about major medical decisions that are being implemented in a child's life and their child's life.”

School boards have long been able to set different policies based around state law. For example, state law requires reproductive health education to begin no later than seventh grade. Many start teaching about puberty in fifth grade, when many students begin puberty. But some could choose not to start until seventh grade.

Those kinds of judgment calls are being made by individual teachers and principals, as they confront the new law. .

After the law was passed, some teachers were asking parents for permission to call students by another name, even though teachers are only required to notify parents that their student wants to be called by a different name.

That happened to Charlie Pine, a transgender high school junior in Wake County. Pine’s parents supported the name change, but some students’ parents decline to give permission for name-change requests.

And fear of their parents’ reaction is pushing some transgender students to revert to their old names, Pine said.

It’s possible updated guidelines will result in more consistent actions from teachers. The second semester won’t begin for most North Carolina students until mid-January, when transgender students will introduce themselves to new sets of teachers.

Wake County recently issued guidance to principals stating that schools must notify parents when a student asks to go by a nickname, such as "Kate" instead of "Catherine." That's in addition to rules requiring schools to notify parents if a student wants to go by a different pronoun or another name entirely. The guidance also stipulated that the notification requirement wouldn’t apply to students who began going by a different name or pronoun before the law was passed in August."

Fitzgerald says the law should prevent children from transitioning their lives in school and keeping their gender transition a secret from their parents at home.

Craig White, the director of the Supportive Schools Program at the Campaign for Southern Equality, said many transgender students haven’t come out to their families or even school communities out of fear. It’s the child’s choice when they’re ready, and families and schools should make sure children know they would be OK if they did come out, he said.

White worries that the trust triangle among a student, the student’s family and the school is being replaced with government directives.

“What we have is the General Assembly breaking that triangle apart, saying, ‘Nobody in there gets to choose. We, as the government, get to choose,’” White said.

Galey, when arguing for the bill during a hearing last year, argued that schools not telling parents that their child is transitioning is a violation of trust.

Trust between the student and their school doesn’t supersede information parents should have access to, Fitzgerald said.

Some parents “wanted to have their rights firmly established, that there can be no secrets kept from the parents by the school,” Fitzgerald said. “And this law is a first step.”

Fitzgerald said the law shouldn’t be structured around the “outlier” students who might face harm at home for coming out, because the law attempts to exempt those children, and because other state laws are designed to help children who are abused or neglected.

LGBTQ+ youth being kicked out of their homes for coming out is well-documented. And fears created because of the new law are changing how students interact with their schools, White said.

“Supportive adults are finding themselves really bound and prevented from supporting students,” White said. He noted that the advisers of school groups supporting LGBTQ+ students now feel the need to leave the room when the club meets to make sure that they don't hear anything that they would be required to report to parents.

“It's really created this sense for a lot of students that they're living in almost a surveillance state where the school is watching them for any sign that they might become queer or trans, and it's going to be reported right away,” he said “So we're hearing a lot more absenteeism. A lot less engagement around academics.”

Singling out transgender or nonbinary people for different treatment — for example, by requiring parental notification for transgender students’ name changes but not for cisgender students’ name changes — is discriminatory, White said.

In the end, the new law doesn’t actually guarantee that a transgender or nonbinary student will be granted their wish to go by a different name or pronoun. That’s another issue advocates like White want to sort out under federal law.

Transgender students drop or skip classes when teachers refuse to call them by the new name, LGBTQ advocates say. Others continue to go to class anyway and end up feeling humiliated when a teacher calls them by their old name, sometimes being outed as transgender to their new classmates for the first time.

“In an ideal world, for me, and many trans youth across the whole state would be to just leave us alone,” said Pine, the Wake County student. “And maybe let us change our name without any parent notification. Let us just let us use names. Let us use whatever pronouns we want.”

Pine said the law focuses on parents’ rights at the expense of children, adding:

“It's just taking away a child's right to individuality and their human right to privacy.”