This title isn’t clickbait, I’m asking genuinely.
This year’s championship is in Houston, and that’s for all teams (per the website and blog posts). However, the Governor of TX just released a wonderful little note that says that any form of affirming care for trans kids is child abuse.
https://twitter.com/ErinInTheMorn/status/1496511215719399431?s=20&t=3lOHHaZGEGMtcrfRS0hfOQ
(For the sake of those not more aware, trans children in almost all countries incl. the US essentially can’t get surgeries of any kind. However they are sometimes prescribed puberty blockers which delay a natal puberty to avoid them being subjected to a natal puberty they very clearly don’t want. The premise of this order is essentially to hurt trans kids.)
How this effects FIRST, you may ask, well… it makes it a reporting requirement for teachers and doctors. The note also says that parents supporting a kid who is trans is child abuse with all the limitations that carries. FIRST has plenty of teams in Texas, and this is on top of the bathroom bills of 2017/now, and the trans sports “debates” of more recent memory. Texas has had multiple attempts at bathroom bills fail, but this is just part of the ongoing stress that trans adults, and esp. trans kids face in the US.
The ACLU has said that this isn’t legal yet as Abbot’s memorandum is circulated, it’s still going to cause an incalculable amount of anguish for trans students while it’s fought in courts, who have already have endured quite a bit of strife in FIRST circles before.
In short; is there a safe way for trans students to attend the FIRST Championship without Texas mentors who are teachers / otherwise obligated being forced to report them under the absurd premise of child abuse?