The day before summer break ended in August, Kenneth and Amelia Smith learned their 13-year-old child would not be addressed at school by her preferred name. So they decided the eighth grader, who had said she was transgender a few months earlier, would learn in their home in Katy, Texas, a conservative suburb west of Houston.
The Katy school district’s decision to tell teachers not to call certain students by names that do not match their birth certificates came after Gov. Greg Abbott signed a Republican-led education bill that prohibits employees at K-12 public and charter schools from “assisting” students with socially transitioning genders, including through name or pronoun changes.
Also banned were authorized student clubs based on gender identity or expression, such as L.G.B.T.Q. Pride clubs, or gender and sexuality alliances.
“We just couldn’t send her to school in that harmful environment,” Ms. Smith, 41, said.
The Texas measure is among the most far-reaching anti-diversity laws in the country and the first to explicitly ban such clubs, part of a broader backlash on gender issues in the state that has already affected higher education. At Texas A&M, a professor was fired and the university president resigned last month after a lecture recognizing more than two genders came under fire. Texas Tech University directed faculty to comply with President Trump’s executive order recognizing only male and female genders.
Supporters of the K-12 law argue that gender and sexuality are topics too contentious for school and that conservative victories in the 2024 Republican primaries, fought specifically on education issues, showed the Legislature was reflecting the will of voters.
“Suggesting that Texas parents are ‘OK’ with what was happening in public schools before Governor Abbott passed these protections is completely absurd,” said Andrew Mahaleris, the governor’s spokesman, in a statement.
Jonathan Covey, the director of policy for Texas Values, which championed the law, added, “We shouldn’t be teaching things that a lot of people disagree on and that get into a cultural battleground.”
The American Civil Liberties Union and a group of L.G.B.T.Q. and student rights organizations filed a lawsuit in August, arguing that the law “censors huge swaths of constitutionally protected speech” and represents an “overzealous attempt” to ban diversity, equity and inclusion. They may have legal precedent on their side.
A similar law in Florida was initially interpreted by some schools to ban gender and sexuality clubs, but a 2024 legal settlement clarified that those groups were allowed. A 2023 law in Iowa also prompted many school districts to ban the groups. A federal court temporarily blocked portions of the law in May, saying they had violated students’ First Amendment rights.
L.G.B.T.Q. teenagers across Texas said they had found support and camaraderie in their school’s Pride clubs, whose activities ranged from hangouts with snacks and board games to formal student-led presentations about historical events like the Stonewall riots.
And some parents said the Legislature's so-called parents’ bill of rights was taking away their rights. Adam Donmoyer, a parent in Austin, said he would have allowed his 16-year-old L.G.B.T.Q. son, Eliot, to participate in a school-sponsored Pride club. Instead, he said, the state is "making decisions for me.”
With court action pending, school districts have taken varying approaches to implementing the law, leaving students in wildly different circumstances depending on the politics of their district.
Katy and Conroe, two large conservative districts, have interpreted the law to mean that students cannot change their pronouns to ones that differ from their biological sex — even with their parents’ permission.
More liberal districts have decided the opposite. The Austin school district determined that the use of different pronouns and names did not constitute “assisting” social transitioning, according to an email obtained by The New York Times.
Students in liberal pockets of Texas have also found ways to continue to their L.G.B.T.Q. groups by rebranding them, moving off campus or meeting on campus without the school’s backing. In conservative areas, some students say they have grown too discouraged to congregate amid increasing hostility toward gay and transgender people.
“Why are we so focused on harming these kids?” asked Julie Johnson, a parent in Katy whose child, Adrian Moore, is a 17-year-old transgender boy. Both are plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
The law has also put educators in uncomfortable situations. Adrian pointed to theater or art programs. “No one involved wants us to have to put our legal names that we don’t want people to know,” Adrian said. “Do we just write our last name on the program?”
In Cinco Ranch, a small community within Katy, students in the school’s gender and sexuality club considered changing the group’s name to “inclusivity club,” but could not get the school’s backing, according to several members of the group.
Instead, the students found an adult unaffiliated with the high school to help book a room in the public library around the corner from their school. The Rev. Heather Tolleson of First Christian Church, which brands itself as the only L.G.B.T.Q.-affirming church in Katy, said the church would serve as the sponsor.
“They are the visionaries,” Ms. Tolleson said. “We are just here to support.”
About 25 Cinco Ranch High School students gathered in the library after school one day last week. Students talked about Hispanic figures in L.G.B.T.Q. history, and then dispersed around the room. Some made artwork. Others talked with friends or breakdanced in a circle. There were cookies, Mexican hot chocolate and chips and salsa, all brought by the students.
Oliver Elam, 17, moved from rural East Texas to Houston as a freshman and felt welcome at Bellaire High School, one of the largest in the area. The school has had a robust gay-straight alliance for years, which met frequently in a teacher’s classroom.
Now, there is no explicit teacher support.
“I intentionally stepped back,” said Sarah Humphrey, the club’s former teacher sponsor.
Oliver, who was chosen last year to be the club’s president, has continued to organize unofficial meetings during lunch in empty classrooms. But attendance has dwindled to just a handful of students from more than two dozen last year. A statewide ban on cellphones at public K-12 schools this year has made it difficult to communicate about where and when the meetings will be, Oliver said. And without the school’s sponsorship, students have not been able to use the school’s announcement system.
“I didn’t want to give up on this club completely,” Oliver said. “I didn’t want to let them win.”
In Austin, a blue dot in the center of the state, Eliot Donmoyer, a 16-year-old junior, said he had not felt like he needed the Pride club because he had support through other activities such as theater and choir. Now, he said it was his responsibility to keep the Pride alliance going at his school, Liberal Arts and Science Academy, for students who do feel they need it.
The group may not be recognized by the school officially, but, he said, “We’re going to put up posters even though we are not supposed to.”
“We’re just going to put them up until people take them down,” Eliot said.
In Fort Worth, the gender and sexuality alliance at Fossil Ridge High School has disbanded, and students do not plan to resuscitate it, said Amber Tibbs, 17, a senior at the school and the club’s former secretary. The school is in the Keller Independent School District, which has become known for book bans and other culture-war controversies.
Lena Lee, an English teacher who previously sponsored the high school’s now-banned L.G.B.T.Q. club, worried about some of her students. “They don’t feel safe in their homes,” she said. “They don’t feel safe at school. They don’t feel safe with the government.”
In Katy, Ms. Smith said she was encouraged over the summer as her child gained in confidence after she changed her name and wardrobe. When she wore a skirt and a hair clip for the first time, Ms. Smith said, she was “beaming.”
Ms. Smith and her husband did not think it was too much to ask the child’s teachers and administrators to respect the family’s choice. The Smiths said they met with each of her middle-school teachers to ask them to use the child’s new name and pronouns. (The Smiths asked that their child not be identified by name in this article to protect her privacy.)
The day before school started, the Smiths said they were told the teachers would not do so.
Katy school district officials did not respond to a request for comment. But during a school board meeting in August, the district’s lawyer said that it was against the law for teachers and administrators to call students by pronouns that did not correspond to their biological sex, even with parental permission.
The Smiths filled out the paperwork to enroll their child in a free virtual school. The couple adopted two new kittens to keep her company while she learned from a computer screen on the dining table.
“I don’t get to talk to too many people now,” she said. But, she added, online school is better than being at a place where “they weren’t going to respect me.”