Oklahoma’s Ryan Walters stopped a trans teen from updating his school records
Ryan Walters, Oklahoma's top education official, pushed an emergency rule to prevent students from changing the gender on their school files. One family is suing.
OKLAHOMA CITY — Sitting on his living room couch, a 16-year-old high school student described all the reasons he’s fighting to change his gender identity on official documents.
He doesn’t want his classmates to know he’s trans. He worries about the disrespectful comments he hears from people who don’t realize he transitioned years ago, the ugly rhetoric on social media that prompts him to put down his phone, and the alarming data and stories about harassment and violence.
But mostly, J. Doe — as the teen is referred to in a lawsuit his family filed last month against the Oklahoma State Board of Education — just wants to be seen as a boy, not a transgender boy.
“Because there is a big difference,” he said in an interview at his Oklahoma City home. “There shouldn’t be, but there is.”
Last fall, a few weeks after the state’s education department learned that J. Doe had obtained a court order to update his gender to male on all of his official records, the Board of Education created an emergency rule requiring school districts to get state approval before changing gender markers on students’ private files. Then the board decided unanimously — without notifying his family to give them a chance to weigh in — that J. Doe’s student records should continue to list him as female.
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