Gov. Greg Abbott speaks during the opening keynote lunch at the Texas Public Policy Foundation Texas Policy Summit 2024 in Austin on March 20, 2024.suggested Texas public school teachers should be barred from wearing clothes that don’t conform to traditional gender norms, raising the prospect that the GOP-controlled Legislature could pursue restrictions on transgender teachers and how they dress.
Abbott, addressing the Young Conservatives of Texas convention in Dallas, made the remarks as he recounted the story of a male teacher in North Texas who wore a pink dress for his school’s spirit day earlier this year. “This person, a man, dressing as a woman in a public high school in the state of Texas, he’s trying to normalize the concept that this type of behavior is okay,” Abbott said Friday, according to an audio recording. “This type of behavior is not okay, and this is the type of behavior that we want to make sure we end in the state of Texas.”
Rachmad Tjachyadi, who taught chemistry at Hebron High School in Carrollton, resigned last month after a conservative social media account posted a video of him wearing the pink dress. Though Lewisville ISD officials found that he did not run afoul of any district policies, Tjachyadi said he decided to step down because the video sparked a wave of “hateful comments” that threatened to “remove the focus from the great things our students and staff are doing.
Abbott did not say how he wanted teachers’ attire to be regulated, but his comments received immediate support from current and incoming lawmakers. The positive reception came in response to the Observer reporter’s post that described Abbott as suggesting “he wants to ban trans and gender nonconforming people from being public school teachers.”The governor was among those who circulated the video of Tjachyadi when it was posted in February.