Arkansas Senate advances bill requiring biologically based pronouns in school

The Arkansas Senate has passed a bill prohibiting teachers from using pronouns for students other than those assigned at birth, at least without parental permission.

The vote was 19 to 5, with 18 votes required for passage, according to Arkansas Online. Democrats supplied all the nay votes.

Nine Republican senators didn’t cast votes on the measure, making the margin of victory much closer than it might have been, while also understating support for the bill.

The bill now goes to the desk of Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders for her signature, who is expected to approve the bill and make it a law.

In addition to covering public schools, the law also would apply to colleges and universities in cases where minors are concerned, reported 5 News Online.

GOP state Sen. Mark Johnson said the bill was merely a measure to help protect teachers.

“We are not going to pick on kids,” Johnson said, according to Arkansas Online.

Johnson cited the case of a Shawnee State University professor who was fired for not using a student’s preferred pronouns. The university later reached a $400,000 settlement with the professor, said Arkansas Online.

The new law would prohibit schools from requiring teachers to use a preferred pronoun.

“Once again, this is to protect teachers. You can try to twist it whatever way you want to, but that’s what it is really about,” Johnson said, according to the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette.

A person who is harmed by a violation of the bill’s provisions may sue for injunctive relief, monetary damages, reasonable attorney’s fees and costs, or any other appropriate relief under the bill. Students wouldn’t be disciplined for refusing to use a name not listed on another person’s birth certificate, NWA Online reports.

The bill also would prohibit the use of nicknames for kids outside of those commonly derived from the child’s given name, Arkansas Online reports.

The sponsor of the bill, Republican state Rep. Wayne Long, tried to exclude nicknames from the bill, but found no practical way of being able to do that while still maintaining the projected effectiveness of the law, according to NWA Online.

The impending Arkansas law is just one of a number of such laws that have swept through state legislatures around the country this year. In Arizona, a similar bill just advanced in the state House. 

Rep. John Kavanagh, the sponsor of the Arizona measure, used a powerful argument for such laws, saying children may already be in counseling over gender confusion and the parents need to be notified about pronoun use in order to maintain compliance with the goals of the counseling.

It would be “unconscionable” to keep parents “willfully blind,” to a child’s gender confusion, he said, according to the Arizona Capitol Times.