Because the place I live is terrible, the state legislature has passed, and our governor has signed, a “Don’t Say Gay” bill inspired by the recent bullshit in Florida. I’ve been thinking hard about how I want to deal with this bill as an educator and I think my thoughts are formed enough that I can write about it.

First and foremost: I refuse to out any student to their parents under any circumstances, my teaching license be damned. I simply won’t do it. Any parents who needs their kids’ teachers to let them know that their kid is trans does not need to be notified that their kids are trans. If you could be trusted with that information, you’d already have it.

That said, there’s noncompliance and then there’s noncompliance, and this bill is so sloppily written that one wonders why they even bothered.

(That’s not true. They bothered because they wanted to make it clear to a vulnerable minority that they hate them and think they should be dead. That’s the reason this bill passed. It’s the only reason.)

Anyway, here’s the text of the law:

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Chapter 7.5. Parental Notification Regarding Identification

Sec. 1. As used in this chapter, “school” has the meaning set forth in IC 20-30-17-1.
Sec. 2. (a) A school shall notify in writing at least one (1) parent of a student, if the student is an unemancipated minor, of a request made by the student to change the student’s:
(1) name; or
(2) pronoun, title, or word to identify the student.
(b) Not later than five (5) business days after the date on which a school receives a request described in subsection (a), the school shall provide notification to a parent as required by subsection (a).

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I can think of two ways to deal with this law. The first relies on a close reading of the text itself. Note the usage of the words “request” and “change” in the first line of Sec. 2, and the repetition of “a school receives a request” in subsection b.

This does not describe a situation that ever happens.

First of all, I, a teacher, am not a school as defined by the law, and the word “teacher” does not appear in the law. There is not a form that a kid fills out when they decide that they want to be Ryan and not Sophia, nor is there anywhere at all where someone can file to have their pronouns changed. I find out that a kid wants to use different pronouns or a different name when they tell me, generally right after they’ve met. It strains credulity to call that a “request” to “change” anything. It’s them telling me what they want to be called, and it’s not a “request.” I have gone by my middle name for my entire life and have had to tell every teacher I have ever had to call me something other than what was written on the attendance form in front of them. By this law, even a diminutive or a nickname– going by “Andy” instead of “Andrew” or “DJ” instead of “Denise Jane”– requires notification.

There are, plain and simple, no “requests” being made here as the law seems to envision, and even if they are, they are being made to teachers, not to a school, and the law does not state who needs to make said requests and makes no requirement that I, for example, pass on said request to an administrator.

So that’s the first possibility; simply ignore the law, because as written it genuinely doesn’t appear to me to require me to do anything and does not bother to make itself clear enough to make it possible to figure out how to comply. It doesn’t even define “provide notification” in any coherent form other than saying that it should be by writing.

The second option is some form of malicious compliance. Again, the law does not specifically mention trans students, and as such it seems to apply to all of them. Which means that every “Andrew” who wants to be “Andy” or “Emmanuel” who wants to be “Manny” triggers the law, and if Bill wanting to be Bella gets a notification, that means that Robert wanting to be Bob gets one too. The law makes no distinction. It also– and this is potentially important– makes no requirement that the actual new name or pronouns be identified.

So I can either:

1. literally send a letter to every single parent I have at the beginning of the year stating that I will call every student I have by the names and pronouns they prefer; or
2. put said policy into something distributed to every parent (or at least accessible to them) at the beginning of the year, such as a syllabus or parent letter or my class website.

When you consider that the law also says that notification is required for any “word” used to identify the students? Shit. Granted, no kid is making a “request” to be called “you in the green hoodie” by anyone, but again, I don’t think “call me Evan” is a request either by the normal definition of the term. So am I notifying every single parent in the building? Because it is entirely within the realm of possibility that I might be using a “word” to refer to literally every kid in the building on any given day that school is in session, and given that I don’t know most of them those references will almost certainly not be using their names as spelled out on their birth certificates or school registrations.

And can I find a way to get every teacher in the building to notify every parent in the building, thus leading to an utter flood of mail and a nice little bit of civil malicious compliance designed to demonstrate how fucking stupid this law is?

Maybe.