"Come and Get Me": How School Professionals Navigate Parental Rights and the Threat of Anti-LGBTQ+ Legislation

Background and Purpose: In 2023, Louisiana, similar to many others states in the United States, attempted to pass two anti-LGBTQ+ educational bills banning discussion of sexual orientation and gender in schools, creating significant barriers to correctly gendering students, and protecting educators “right” to misgender students due to their own moral or religious objections. Although the proposed legislation did not become law due to the governor’s veto power, similar legislation re-emerged in 2024 and is expected to pass under the new governor who has expressed support for the legislation. This study, which draws on interviews conducted over a time period beginning when the 2023 bills were proposed and ending shortly after the bills failed to become law, captures a crucial and significant point in time, ultimately demonstrating how even proposed, but unenacted educational policy influences students, school professionals, and schools as an institution.

Methods: Part of a larger critical ethnography on the culture and context of gender in schools, this study examines school professionals’ (n=8), including teachers and school administrators, perceptions on parental rights and anti-LGBTQ+ educational legislation. Data was gathered in individual, qualitative interviews using a semi-structured interview protocol. Although the protocol did not directly ask participants about either topic, all but one school professional interviewed discussed the subject (n=7, 87.50%), suggesting the pertinence of the issue to the lives of current school professionals. Themes emerged through immersive and iterative data analysis and line-by-line coding.

Results: School professional perceptions were explored across three major themes: navigating parental rights, fear for the future, and strategic planning. School professionals spoke extensively about the contemporary difficulties of navigating parental rights in schools and conflicts related to discussions of sexuality and gender in the classroom. Given the immense challenges of discussing gender and sexuality in the classroom even without existing censorship laws, study participants expressed deep concerns and fear about the possibility of the proposed legislation passing. In spite of these fears, school professionals shared strategic plans to continue to support students if and when this legislation passes.

Conclusions and Implications: At the time of the interviews, educators were already navigating charged and fraught conversations around parental rights and gender and sexuality in schools. This suggests that the proposal of the laws themselves may have a chilling effect on schools, even in the absence of established law. However, despite intense feelings of fear, school professionals vowed to continue to support LGBTQ+ students through a combination of both subtle and overt strategies. Although the proposed legislation bars discussion of gender and sexuality broadly (inclusive of heterosexuality and cisgender identities), states with similar laws, such as Florida, have proven that the LGBTQ+ community is the intended target of these laws, underscoring the importance of activism and solidarity from those with cisgender and heterosexual privileges. Anti-LGBTQ+ educational legislation is a real threat to equity in schools and school social workers must work with school communities to oppose the passage of discriminatory legislation while also strategically resisting and refusing to comply with discriminatory legislation currently in effect.