Bill preventing Kentucky teachers from being forced to use students' preferred pronouns moves forward

FRANKFORT, Ky. (WDRB) -- Kentucky Senate Bill 150, which would allow teachers to refer to students as the name and gender on their original birth certificate, regardless of the students' pronoun preference, passed the Senate Education Committee on Thursday with an 11-1 vote.

It now moves on to the full Senate for a vote.

Sen. Max Wise, R-Campbellsville, presented the bill in front of the committee and a room full of LGBTQ supporters and advocates Thursday.

Wise filed SB 150 Wednesday afternoon in Frankfort, saying the bill will "strengthen communication and parent empowerment."

The most contentious part of the bill would prevent the Kentucky Board of Education, the Kentucky Department of Education and local districts from requiring or recommending that school personnel use students' preferred pronouns. Wise clarified Thursday that the bill doesn't prevent those staff members from doing so if they please.

"The bill does not prevent students from requesting identification by a non-birth conforming pronoun, nor prevent staff and students from addressing those students with non-conforming pronouns," Wise said.

On Thursday, critics on the Senate Education Committee pushed back against the bill. Sen. Reggie Thomas, D-Lexington, voiced several issues with the proposed legislation. His main concern with the bill is that it would allow teachers to misgender students.

"If a teacher uses, out of form, a pronoun that the child says, 'Well, I don't identify with that pronoun,' that teacher is not barred from doing that," Thomas said in a question to Wise. "That teacher can not be sanctioned. How is that helping the health and safety or self-esteem of the child?"

The room was packed with LGBTQ+ advocates, and many spoke to the committee against the bill. Several transgender men and women argued that the bill puts in danger the lives of trans students in Kentucky.

Miles Joyner, a transgender man who is a licensed social worker in Louisville, told lawmakers that the bill threatens the lives of students.

"I know that if my trans kids that I am treating, who have already transitioned, go into school and their teachers start using the wrong name and pronouns for them, they will be suicidal," Joyner said.

Sen. Karen Berg, D-Louisville, who lost her transgender son to suicide in December, watched the vote on the bill in committee.

"My child killed himself because he didn't want to face this again," she told reporters after the bill passed.

Berg, who said she needed her colleagues to know she was watching them vote, claimed the legislation was a political move to gain votes for GOP gubernatorial candidate Kelly Craft.

Wise is Craft's running mate in the upcoming election.

Berg says it's an attempt to show the candidate is 'further right' than the current Republican front runner for governor.

"What they are doing right now, they are intentionally placing themselves to the right of another potential gubernatorial candidate in the hope of winning that vote," she told reporters. "That's what this whole thing, this whole sh**-show is, and they're putting our children smackdab in the middle of it on purpose without a care in the world."

The earliest the bill could receive a vote in the senate is next week.