Ballot Proposal Wants Schools to Notify Parents of Signs Their Kid Is Transgender

Days after a new state law began allowing Colorado students to choose their names at school, an effort to require parental notification for such behavior started petitioning for the November ballot.

Initiative 142 would require that public school staff inform parents if they obtain any information that a student is experiencing "gender incongruence," defined as a difference between the student's biological sex and gender identity. If a child uses a different name or pronouns at school — or even if an employee overhears students talking about their gender identity — their parents would have to be notified.

Advocates of the proposed initiative say they started printing petitions last week. They must collect 124,238 signatures by August 5 to qualify for the ballot.

"This is a conversation that we should be a part of and in charge of. We're the ones who know our children best," says Lori Gimelshteyn, one of the two mothers behind the initiative. "Really good parents who want nothing more than what is best for their child are being left out of this discussion."

This comes after Governor Jared Polis signed House Bill 24-1039 into law on April 29, requiring public school employees to refer to students by their chosen names. Under the new law, refusing to use a student's chosen name that aligns with their gender identity is discrimination. The bill does not require parental notification if a child uses a different name at school, but it doesn't expressly prohibit it.

Gimelshteyn, executive director of the Colorado Parent Advocacy Network, testified against the bill, arguing that "the people of Colorado do not want this. The majority of people in Colorado believe that parents know best for their child."

Proponents say HB 1039 was primarily intended to help transgender and nonbinary students who are out at home but struggle to get their schools to use their preferred names because they haven't legally changed them. The bill was drafted by local teenagers who saw their classmates experience the issue firsthand. Legislators chose not to add a parental notification requirement to the bill to protect kids who aren't comfortable coming out to their families.

"It's really about giving young people a safe place to explore their gender identity. Their house might not be a safe place to do that," says Representative Brianna Titone, Colorado's only transgender legislator and a sponsor of HB 1039. "In some households, being LGBT can result in violent actions. ... People have told me they might have been killed if they told their parents [that they're trans] and they had to wait until they were out of the house to do it. These situations exist."

A 2021 study found that transgender teenagers are more likely than cisgender teens to be abused by a parent or other adult, with 39 percent of trans teens reporting experiencing physical abuse and 73 percent reporting psychological abuse.

Transgender youth also face higher rates of depression, anxiety and suicide than the general population, research shows. In Colorado, 52 percent of transgender and nonbinary youth reportedly seriously considered suicide in 2022, and 17 percent attempted suicide, according to a state survey by the Trevor Project. But they're half as likely to attempt suicide when their preferred names and pronouns are used at home, school or work, according to research out of the University of Texas and Minnesota Department of Health.

"This is not something we just concocted out of thin air. This is trying to solve a real problem," Titone says. "[Initiative 142] is very counter to trans kids who are out, and other kids who may be trying to explore being trans in a safe place."

Gimelshteyn contends that keeping parents out of the loop risks exposing children to emotional trauma, since they don't have familial support while they're questioning their identities. "We have to give parents the benefit of the doubt," she says.

"Almost on a weekly basis, families are filing incident reports with our organization because school districts are hiding gender transitions of their child from the parent," Gimelshteyn adds. "These kids felt pressured to transition in order to fit in. ... But they regret it, they're not really transgender, and they feel like they don't have a way out."

The other mother behind Initiative 142, Erin Lee, says her twelve-year-old daughter was "convinced" she was transgender when she started attending after-school Genders and Sexualities Alliance meetings at Larimer County's Wellington Middle School in 2021.

Lee has touted her story as a cautionary tale of allowing students to "socially transition" in schools. She says her daughter was encouraged to identify as transgender and to hide it from her family, resulting in her becoming depressed and suicidal. Lee and a few other parents sued the school district for allegedly violating their parental rights, but a judge dismissed the case in December.

"Parents like me are kept in the dark and bullied into going along with transition, even when we know it's not right for our children," Lee told legislators while testifying against HB 1039 in October.

Gimelshteyn argues that legislators are basing their fears of abusive, transphobic parents off of "rationale from the ’80s and ’90s," adding that "we've come so far" in terms of societal acceptance since then — but Lee has been openly transphobic during the campaign for Initiative 142.

In a social media video advocating for the ballot measure on May 2, Lee called Titone "a man who pretends to be a woman" and who "makes a mockery of womanhood."

"It just shows what their real motivations are," Titone says. "They're using parental information to try to hide these very blatant anti-trans pieces of policy."

Initiative 142 isn't the only proposed ballot measure that LGBTQ advocates call anti-trans. Initiative 160 seeks to ban transgender girls from participating in female sports, restricting participation in public school girls' sports programs to only those assigned female at birth. That proposal was approved to start petitioning on May 3; Protect Kids Colorado is backing the two measures, and petitioners will collect signatures for both simultaneously, Gimelshteyn says.

Organizers with the LGBTQ advocacy group One Colorado say they fought against more than thirty anti-trans ballot measures this year. Most were withdrawn or rejected by the state's title board for not relating to a single subject, but Initiatives 142 and 160 were deemed eligible to continue pushing toward the ballot.

“These ballot initiatives are a huge step backward for the life and liberty of transgender young people in Colorado,” Jax Gonzalez, political director of One Colorado, says in a statement. “We can not allow the vocal minority to legislate their fears. ... For LGBTQ+ youth to have equal access to learning, educational environments need to be places of support for their identity development and sense of belonging."

Colorado lawmakers have recently positioned the state as a leader in transgender rights. Legislators passed a bill last year to shield patients and providers of gender-affirming care from potential penalties from other states. In April, another bill was passed to let trans people change their names after felony convictions.

But the changes haven't come without pushback. On top of the ballot proposals, legislators are facing a lawsuit for cutting off testimonies on the felony name change bill because two witnesses repeatedly misgendered and deadnamed trans people in their comments.

"This won't be the last year we see this kind of stuff," Titone says. "We're going to keep seeing this happen over and over again. But the people of Colorado are smarter than to support something like this."