The Progress Pride Flag flies over the Wisconsin Capitol in June 2023. Wisconsin lawmakers held a hearing Thursday on two bills that would limit the rights of trans and non-binary people under the age of 18.. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)miner)
Two controversial bills that target transgender youth in schools, one dictating how school districts handle name and pronoun changes and the other banning transgender students from sports teams that align with their gender identity, received vast opposition at a public hearing Thursday.
The first bill — AB 103 — would require districts to implement policies stating that parents determine the names and pronouns used by school staff and requiring a parent’s written authorization for school employees to use something different. It includes one exception: if a nickname is a shortened version of a student’s legal first or middle name.
Rep. Barbara Dittrich (R-Oconomowoc) told the Assembly Education Committee that the bill is another way to unite parents and their children. Dittrich and coauthor Sen. Andre Jacque (R-New Franken) said the bill is modeled after a policy implemented at Arrowhead High School in 2022.
“Set aside whether or not you think a child should change their name or socially transition at school age, in our schools, we don’t allow our kids to take a Tylenol without permission from parents. We don’t allow them to go on a field trip without permission from parents. We don’t allow their pictures to be shared without permission from parents,” Dittrich said. “A major life choice — and transitioning and changing your name, it is a major life choice — is something parents should be involved in.”
Dittrich said there should be a legal document affirming that parents approve any changes.
Democrats expressed their opposition to the bill. Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison) said she was concerned about the bill being a “copy and paste” of one local school district’s policy and being applied statewide.
Rep. Christian Phelps (D-Eau Claire) asked how many transgender people Dittrich consulted in drafting the bill. She said she spoke with none.
“This is a parent’s rights bill. The parent is the legal guardian, therefore, I did not consult anyone who’s trans,” Dittrich said.
Sen. Mark Spreitzer (D-Beloit), leader of the LGBTQ+ caucus, and Sen. Melissa Ratcliff (D-Cottage Grove), leader of the Transgender Parent and Non-Binary Advocacy caucus, both testified at the hearing. The bill is “cruel, discriminatory, and inhumane,” said Ratcliff, who is the parent of a transgender child.
“It incentivizes persistent mistreatment of not just transgender and non-binary children, but all children, and it creates unsafe learning environments. It’s a mess of a bill that would lead to absurd situations,” Ratcliff said. “This bill would be laughable if not for the fact that it creates real harm for our trans and non-binary students.”
Ratcliff also noted that the exceptions to the bills were narrow and may not make sense in practice.
“Perhaps your legal name is Richard, and you cannot be called Dick, or perhaps Charles can no longer be a Chuck? Legislatures should not be micromanaging policy choices local school school boards make,” Ratcliff said.
Spreitzer urged lawmakers to not take a vote on the bills or to vote them down in committee. He noted that the bills are unlikely to become law given that Gov. Tony Evers has vetoed similar bills and vowed to veto future legislation.
“This discussion is not aimed at making policy,” he said. “It is just giving a forum for bigotry, and it is going to hurt our youth, and if you don’t have that intent, then I appreciate that, but that is the effect it is going to have, so I would ask you to look at that, consider your own intent and act accordingly.”
Many in the room broke out into applause at Spreitzer’s comments, but committee chair Rep. Joel Kitchens (R-Sturgeon Bay) quickly shut that down.
“Please, I’ve said no cheering. We’re all going to hear things we agree with and disagree with. Just keep it to yourself,” Kitchens said, adding he didn’t want to have to have people removed from the room. He asked the crowd to quiet down several times throughout the day.
Dittrich asked if there are any amendments that could be made to make the bill better, but Spreitzer said the bill isn’t “fixable.” He said the intent of the bill appears to be making it harder for trans and nonbinary youth to change their names or pronouns and “if that is the intent of this bill, I don’t know that there is a way you can fix the language of it through an amendment.”
More than 70 people testified during the public hearing, which ran for more than ten hours, with witnesses given a five-minute time limit.
There were many more opponents than supporters at the hearing — leading Wisconsin Moms For Liberty activist Scarlett Johnson, testifying in favor of the bill, to ask for extra time after hitting the time limit. Johnson argued that she and supporters of the bill were “wildly outnumbered.”
Wisconsin Republicans have introduced bills targeting LGBTQ+ youth many times over the last several years. This year’s bills come as President Donald Trump has also targeted transgender people through a series of executive orders.
Several witnesses noted that this was not their first time testifying against such legislation; one said they were “really tired of coming.”
Luke Berg, an attorney with the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, said the organization has received calls about schools from “far too many Wisconsin parents in the last few years.” Asked about the exact number, Berg estimated that WILL has heard from six to 12 parents.
Lawmakers on the committee asked Berg about what would happen if a student is fearful of their home life. Berg said concerns about students living in an unsafe home environment could be dealt with by Child Protective Services.
“I certainly don’t disagree that there are bad parents, but we have a system and a process in place to deal with that,” Berg said.
WILL clients Tammy Fournier and her daughter, Autumn, said the bill would have been helpful for them and is needed to ensure “no other Wisconsin families would have to experience the government overstep we did.” They testified that at age 12, Autumn was questioning her gender identity and for a time was referred to at school as “he” and by a different name. She later changed her mind.
WILL brought a successful suit against the Kettle Moraine School District on their behalf that claimed the district violated parental rights by adopting a policy to allow, facilitate, and affirm a minor student’s request to transition to a different gender identity at school without parental consent and even over the parents’ objection. A judge blocked the district’s policy that had allowed students to choose their name and pronouns.
Many of the bill’s opponents, including parents of transgender youth, said transgender youth need support and should have the ability to make decisions for themselves. They said the bill could be detrimental to young people’s mental health.
“Parental involvement in support is incredibly important, but it’s not always present, and when it’s not, our schools can be a safe place for students who do not have a safe place at home,” Spreitzer said. “There are nuanced ways we can navigate this without this one-size-fits-all approach that is aimed at making it harder for trans and non-binary students, and even in some cases, their supportive parent.”
The Trevor Project’s 2024 U.S. National Survey on the Mental Health of LGBTQ+ Young People surveyed 358 Wisconsin youths, finding significant mental health struggles LGBTQ+ youth can face. About 39% of LGBTQ+ youth surveyed reported seriously considering suicide, including 44% of transgender and nonbinary youth, and 12% reported a suicide attempt, the survey found. In addition, 63% of LGBTQ+ surveyed reported experiencing symptoms of anxiety.
Kai Pyle, an assistant professor at UW-Madison told lawmakers about their experience exploring their identity growing up. Pyle stipulated they were speaking in a personal capacity, not for the university.
Pyle said that at the age of 15 they asked friends, classmates and teachers to use a name different from their legal name, and it was mostly accepted. A little over a year later, they came out as transgender, which was a “little bit of a more difficult change for many of my peers and teachers, but they were used to calling me Kai at that point, which in 2009 was a pretty unusual name in Wisconsin,” Pyle said.
Pyle questioned the effect the bill would have had on them had it been law then.
“Would I have been acceptable because it was potentially just a shortened version of my legal name, which also started with the letter K?… The situation that a student like me would find themselves in, should this bill become law, clearly shows how this policy is discriminatory specifically to transgender youth, and how nonsensical it is to try to legally limit staff from using students’ own preferred names and pronouns,” Pyle said. “Beyond simply being nonsensical and discriminatory, however, it is fundamentally an attack on the right of all humans, regardless of their age, to be treated with dignity in a way that respects their sense of self.”
The second bill — AB 100 — would require Wisconsin K-12 schools sports teams be designated based on “sex,” defined as the sex at birth, and would ban transgender girls from participating on teams and being in locker rooms consistent with their gender identity.
Tessa Price, a Madison resident, said the legislation won’t be successful in gaining the type of control that lawmakers appear to want with the bill.
“At the end of the day, trans people exist, they play sports, and they will continue playing sports with other members [with] community support that they find,” Price said. “So you will still find expressions within those sports that don’t match the control you’re trying to exert over it.”
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