(The Center Square) – Last year, Tennessee passed a law saying no teacher or student in public schools can face discipline for refusing to call a person by preferred pronouns that contradict their physical sex. Republican state Rep. Aron Maberry said he doesn’t think that goes far enough.
What if a biologically male teacher tells his class to start calling him “Mrs.,” or a biological woman tells students to address her as “Mr.”?
Maberry, a pastor in Clarksville, told The Center Square it wasn’t a hypothetical scenario, but something that actually came up at least twice in his district – once at his daughter’s middle school, again at a high school.
“It’s confusing to the kids, and it puts them in an awkward position that if you don’t call the teacher by the name that they’re preferring, then are they going to retaliate against the kid?” Maberry asked. “I believe in objective truth, and I believe that we should not be trying to confuse children.”
Legislation he sponsored this year would expand on the pronoun law, shielding Tennessee students from discipline for refusing to use social titles that don’t match a teacher’s biological sex. So there could be no consequences for calling a male teacher “Mr.,” or a female “Mrs.” The law would also cover teachers, state employees and state contractors.
It’s one of at least 20 proposals that came up in the current legislative session dealing explicitly with transgender issues, continuing the Republican supermajority’s years-long effort to drive the controversial ideology from all facets of public life. Democrats, meanwhile, have doubled down on defending it.
“We can only judge you by the bills that you bring,” state Rep. Vincent Dixie, D-Nashville, told Maberry in an April 1 committee hearing, “and your bills are some of the most hateful and derogatory bills that I’ve seen this year.”
The “honorifics” bill sailed through the Senate in March in a 26-6 vote along party lines. It’s expected to pass the House early this week, which would make it the sixth anti-transgender measure approved by the Tennessee General Assembly this year.
Tennessee’s actions on the issue are significant because last year, the state won a major victory at the U.S. Supreme Court that dealt a blow to the healthcare industry’s medical interventions on children. The court’s 6-3 decision in United States v. Skrmetti upheld a 2023 Tennessee law banning “gender-affirming care” on minors, including puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. The decision also upheld similar bans in 24 other states.
Why Tennessee?
While states including Florida, Iowa, Montana and Texas have passed laws protecting students and teachers from punishment for refusing to recognize transgender identities, Maberry’s law may be the first in the nation to specifically address transgender staff potentially asking kids to use Mr., Mrs., Ms., Miss or something else in their monikers.
“We may be the first, which would not be the first time we were the first on an issue,” Maberry told The Center Square. “We’re taking a firm stance that we’re going to protect children in our state.”
People who identify as transgender make up an estimated 0.98% of Tennessee’s population, according to data compiled last year by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law. That figure includes about 15,600 transgender youth ages 13 to 17.
Still, Republicans remain on a warpath.
“Honestly, when you think that they’ve taken it as far as they can, they come up with another blow, another version,” Minority Leader Raumesh Akbari, D-Memphis, told The Center Square. “I think it’s just a red meat issue. It’s national. It kind of trickled down.”
A press secretary for the Senate Democratic Caucus called the trans issue “primary election poll clickbait.”
“They have picked out a portion of the population that is miniscule and are using them as a punching bag,” Brandon Puttbrese told The Center Square. “They’re focusing on something that will never affect 99 percent of classrooms.”
Republicans have also pushed measures this year to keep transgender concepts out of government, courts, health care and even child-rearing. Of them, five have passed both chambers, five still have chances of approval before the legislature’s planned adjournment on Wednesday, and ten have already died or appear stalled. Seven of the 20 were holdovers from last year.
“They are trying to seal things up in case there’s ever a Democratic governor,” said Chris Sanders, executive director of the LGBTQ+ advocacy group Tennessee Equality Project. “I think some of the lawmaking is motivated by, ‘Let’s seal up as much as we can in case we ever lose our power.’ So that it makes it as hard as possible to reverse it.”
Barrage of bills
In the current session, Tennessee lawmakers floated unsuccessful proposals to keep Pride flags and Pride Month off government property, to have sex discrimination laws no longer apply to gay or transgender people, and to make it easier for county residents to request that libraries remove certain books.
One bill from last year that didn’t move would’ve named a state park’s swimming pool after Riley Gaines, the former collegiate swimmer and activist against men in women’s sports. Though not a law, Gov. Bill Lee signed a resolution this month designating June as “Nuclear Family Month,” supplanting Pride Month.
Proposed legislation still in play this year would regulate businesses as adult entertainment if they host male or female impersonators, prohibit governments and school districts from covering gender treatments for their employees, define sex as male and female and designate facilities such as women’s jails, domestic violence shelters and restrooms as female-only.
Other measures already approved and awaiting the governor’s signature:
• Senate Bill 676 / House Bill 754, sponsored by Sen. Brent Taylor and Rep. Jeremy Faison, has been heavily criticized as setting up a state tracking system for transgender medical patients as well as those seeking detransition treatments. The bill, which cleared the House on Wednesday by a 73-23-1 vote, requires doctors to report on transgender-related healthcare, gender clinics accepting state funds to also perform detransition procedures, and insurers covering gender treatments to also cover detransition treatment.
• SB 1989 / HB 2082, which cleared the House on Tuesday in a 79-16 vote, says if a parent insists on raising a child as their actual biological sex, that cannot be construed as child abuse, neglect, or endangerment or considered as a negative factor by a judge in determining custody arrangements.
• SB 2031 / HB 1872, which cleared the House and Senate earlier this month, allows patients to sue their doctor for “coercing” them into seeking gender reassignment.
On Thursday Gov. Lee signed SB 2118 / HB 2498, which prohibits Tennessee’s managed care Medicaid program, TennCare, from providing coverage for medical procedures “for the purpose of enabling an individual to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the individual’s sex.”
The governor has also already signed another ideology-related bill that Maberry sponsored in the House. SB 1664 / HB 1665 prohibits healthcare providers from asking certain gender-related questions to minors, such as whether they feel comfortable in their bodies, without a parent’s consent.
Maberry told The Center Square that legislation also originated with incidents involving his own children.
“To be quite frank, the way that bill came to me is my own daughters got asked by their primary care providers if they were OK being girls,” he said. “And it made me, their mother, and our children very mad.”
‘Honorifics’ origins
That’s why Republicans keep bearing down on transgender issues, Maberry said, because they impact even people who have zero involvement.
“Because what they’re doing is they’re planting the thoughts and the seeds,” he said. “That’s what a lot of this stuff is doing, to try to confuse children, and we’re taking a stance in Tennessee we’re not going to do that.”
He said he introduced the “honorifics” bill, House Bill 1666 / Senate Bill 1665, because of stories coming from constituents, including the best friend of his 14-year-old middle daughter.
According to Maberry, a biologically female teacher at Richview Middle School in Clarksville told a classroom she wanted to be addressed as “Mx.,” a gender-neutral courtesy title typically adopted by people identifying as non-binary. He said he also heard that a male teacher at Kenwood High School who is transitioning told students to start using “Mrs.”
Messages from The Center Square seeking to verify those accounts weren’t returned by Richview Principal Kelly Daniel, Kenwood Principal Nigel Anderson or Clarksville-Montgomery County School System Chief Communications Officer Anthony Johnson.
Maberry said he’s heard nothing about any students being disciplined at either school for refusing to use those preferred titles. His proposal would not only prevent that from happening, but bars teachers from asking students to use opposite-sex social titles in the first place.
Asked if free speech doesn’t cut both ways, both for a teacher asking for a preferred honorific and a student refusing to go along, Maberry said he’s not concerned about the law holding up in court.
“Mainly because I’m actually extending a bill that was passed the year before, that has held up,” he added.
The pronoun law has been criticized for exposing schools to lawsuits if a teacher requests alternative pronouns, or if they use a student’s preferred transgender pronouns. Sanders, of Tennessee Equality Project, called Maberry’s proposed addition “horrible.”
“That’s just not the kind of thing we need in schools,” he said. “Not to mention, that’s possibly workplace harassment, if you’re misgendering somebody. I guess that sort of thing will be sorted out in the courts.”
Sen. Akbari, who voted against the bill, said she can’t fathom why anyone would want to address someone by something other than what they want to be called.
“At the end of the day,” she said of her party, “our fight is to make sure that people are not being discriminated against, or necessary care is being withheld, simply because they are different from who we are.”
