Couples walk the hallways at Carroll Senior like they do at any other high school: holding hands, kissing goodbye before parting for seventh period. But only the straight ones, according to Emma. An outspoken senior who loves reading and launched a “banned book” club last year, she says she never publicly displays affection with her girlfriend at school and avoids attracting unwanted attention to her sexual orientation at all cost. She’s overheard homophobic slurs in casual conversations and has seen her friends get called them too. If Emma—who is using a pseudonym because she is not out to her parents—is assigned a personal essay in English class and writes about a relationship, she changes pronouns to male to obscure her orientation. She explained to me recently: “It’s just easier when you’re not openly queer in this district.”
Three years ago, Emma and her family moved from Florida to Southlake, the north Dallas suburb, the summer before she entered high school. When she talks to old friends, she tells them Carroll High seems ideal from the outside: academically rigorous with consistently high test scores. But day-to-day student life is difficult for her and other queer students. “They have this obsession with sticking to the tradition,” Emma said, “which is really just their cover for continuing outdated practices.”
Emma was hopeful things would change this school year. In April, the Biden administration announced new Title IX rules, including prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. But in May, the Carroll Independent School District board of seven trustees voted unanimously to sue the Department of Education to block enforcement of the changes—the only school district in the nation to do so. Just a few years ago, in the 2021 school board election, trustees backed by Southlake Families PAC, a group that identifies itself as “unapologetically rooted in Judeo-Christian values,” won the majority of seats on the board. Ever since, they’ve pushed a right-wing agenda.
When Emma heard that the board was the only one in the country to file a lawsuit, she wasn’t surprised. After all, she noted, the words “Protect the tradition” are painted across the top of the stairs at the senior high school.
In early May the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights found that the district had violated the civil rights of students in four cases, two on racial discrimination and two on LGBTQ discrimination. These students reported alleged instances of antisemitic harassment, sexual orientation–based harassment on Instagram, and uses of homophobic and racial slurs at school. The board maintains that the district complied with the law and protected the students, but the Office of Civil Rights gave it ninety days to determine how to address what it deemed were violations. The board recently announced it would not comply with what it called a “political agenda” and “all-out assault” against the district. In the ninety-day negotiation window, the board instead focused their efforts on the Title IX lawsuit.
“Title IX has been a cornerstone of educational equality for decades,” said school board president Cameron Bryan in an email to the district community on August 1. “However, recent changes proposed by the Biden administration threatened to undermine the foundational principles of fairness and due process that Title IX upholds.”
Bryan said in a May statement that the lawsuit is about “protecting our daughters and girls from boys accessing their bathrooms and locker rooms and competing on their athletic teams.” (The new Title IX regulations do not include new rules on eligibility for athletic teams, which the Department of Education is still developing.) The district also argued that it would cost millions to train staff and implement new policies to comply with the regulations. The Department of Education estimates compliance with the new rules will cost $98 million across the country this year. When reached for an interview, a media representative for the district said the board has no statement beyond what has been published.
Former Southlake parent and current resident Pam Francis, whose daughter is queer, has a different perspective. “Southlake has this martyr complex, and they want to be the one perceived as battling against this woke Department of Education,” Francis said. “Having been in the spotlight, they’re just doubling down.”
The vote on Title IX was the latest in a string of moves to curb what they refer to as “DEI” practices in the district. Last year Carroll ISD became the first district in thirty years to leave the Texas Association of School Boards, citing opposition to its diversity and inclusion policies. The district then removed gender expression and sexual orientation as categories explicitly protected from discrimination in its Student Code of Conduct, language that had been there since 2019. The district also adopted policies that prohibit teachers from using the preferred pronouns of trans students and students from using restrooms and locker rooms that do not align with their assigned gender at birth.
Francis, who volunteered for the committee that revised the code of conduct and fought against the change, said the board argued that the handbook already prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex, including gender expression and sexual orientation. Francis says the suit against the Title IX change contradicts the district’s prior logic. “Now they’ve filed this lawsuit saying exactly the opposite—saying that sex doesn’t include gender and sexual orientation and they shouldn’t have to protect these students,” Francis said. “It’s disgusting and it’s infuriating.”
Twenty-six states, including Texas, also sued the Department of Education. In July a U.S. District judge for the Northern District of Texas granted an injunction barring the implementation of the new rules. All of the Title IX cases, including Carroll ISD’s, will head to trial in federal court in the coming months. The conservative Christian group Alliance Defending Freedom is representing CISD pro bono in its fight against Title IX. It is best known for serving on the legal team that won the case overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022 and defending a baker’s right to refuse to make a cake for a same-sex wedding in 2018.
Opponents of the suit, such as Laura Durant, a Southlake parent who founded an LGBTQ ally group called Love Every Dragon (the school’s mascot), recognize they won’t change the minds of board members by speaking out. “The purpose of speaking is so that other people hear us and maybe we can inspire some people to get up there and fight back,” Durant said. “At the very least, let LGBTQ students and their families know that there are people who are standing up for them, because a lot of them feel hopeless right now.”
Former Southlake parent Jennifer Hough, who in 2020 cofounded Dignity for All Texas Students, a nonprofit advocating for diversity, equity, and inclusion in Carroll ISD schools, said the school board’s anti-LGBTQ actions embolden cruelty. “(The board is) saying it’s okay to target a community,”she said. “In a teenager’s brain, it seems like, ‘Well, they’re going after them, so it’s okay for us to bully them.’ It’s this horrible circle they get into, because kids are ruthless.”
Hough knows about the blowback LGBTQ students and allies face. Shortly after founding the nonprofit, her name, along with those of Francis, Durant, and a dozen or so other advocates, was highlighted in a mailer sent to 30,000 homes describing all as a part of the “progressive, liberal machine organizing to attack Southlake values.”
She says her kids, who do not identify as LGBTQ, started getting bullied at the high school over her views. The family began attending group therapy. “I had to back down for a while to protect my kids because I felt like they had too big of a target on their back,” Hough said. Eventually she and her children moved to New York.
Emma appreciates the community members speaking out, but she says it’s not enough to counter what she and others say is a hostile environment for queer students. She thinks the explicit Title IX protections against sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination in school could actually make a difference, especially after seeing teachers ignore students’ preferred names and pronouns.
Despite the lawsuit, Emma remains committed to fostering the supportive queer environment she has formed with her friends at school. “For anyone who is moving here or is here but isn’t out, there are communities that exist,” Emma said. “There are gay people here. It’s not just a bunch of people who hate you.”
