Out Leadership’s partner organization The Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law has issued a statement to call attention to the fact that that Texas House Bills 46 and 50, which are currently under debate in a special session of the Texas Legislature, would negatively impact an estimated 13,800 transgender students in the state.
“The bills would negatively impact Texas’s 13,800 high school-aged youth who identify as transgender,” said Jody Herman, Senior Scholar of Public Policy at the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law. “Restrictions on restroom access would hinder these students’ ability to fully participate in educational opportunities and could lead to health problems.”
HB 46 and HB 50 would stigmatize transgender students, a group already vulnerable to bullying and harassment. In response to a 2015 survey by GLSEN, three in five transgender students from Texas reported that they were prevented from using their preferred pronoun in school and 65 percent were unable to use the restroom consistent with their gender identity. Sixty-eight percent of survey respondents from Texas reported hearing negative remarks about transgender people in school. Additionally, in response to the U.S. Transgender Survey, 73 percent of respondents from Texas who were out or perceived as transgender while in K-12 said they experienced harassment or mistreatment at school.