Dallas schools to crack down on trans athletes in girls' sports after video of official revealing 'loopholes'
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's office announced Friday that the Dallas Independent School District ("ISD") has agreed to an order to ensure the district is not violating state law by allowing trans athletes to compete in girls' sports.
The agreement comes after Paxton requested records from Dallas ISD in February following the release of a video that showed a school district official explaining loopholes to a parent and how they could get their biologically male child on a girls' sports team via an altered birth certificate.
The video, which was made by an undercover journalist from the outlet Accuracy in Media, showed a Dallas ISD LGBTQ youth coordinator saying that Texas had not made a distinction between providing either an original or updated birth certificate for school sport gender eligibility.
"Always refining, you know? They find the loopholes in everything," the advisor said in the video.
"I tell people all the time, I will go to jail for saving their child's life," the advisor continued. "I guess no conservative kids come out gay."
Later in January, a school official from the Irving ISD was seen telling an undercover journalist about the same loophole in another Accuracy in Media video.
"Could you legally change the gender on a birth certificate? I don't know enough about that subject," the Irving ISD official was seen saying in the video. "If you can get that done, and you turn us a birth certificate that says 'this gender,' that's the gender we go with."
Paxton then requested an extensive list of documents from Dallas ISD and Irving ISD on Feb. 6. On March 31, Paxton filed a legal petition to conduct depositions of key Dallas ISD officials to ensure that the District is not violating Texas law by permitting biological males to participate in girls' sports.
Now, Paxton has come to an agreement with the Dallas ISD to ensure that such loopholes won't be exploited.
"I urge all other school districts to fulfill their legal obligations to protect girls' sports and end any attempts to circumvent Texas law. Biological males have no place in girls' sports, and any Texas public schools doing otherwise will be held accountable," Paxton said in a statement.
In June 2023, Texas passed the Save Women's Sports Act, which bans trans athletes from competing in girls' and women's sports, and only allows students to compete in the gender category listed on their birth certificate. The law only allows schools to recognize changes made to birth certificates that were made to correct a clerical error.
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