A subcommittee in the Virginia House of Delegates voted Monday to advance a bill requiring schoolteachers and school staff to notify parents about their children’s purported gender transitions, partially in response to the horrific sex-trafficking story of Sage, a girl whose high school hid her transgender identity from her mother.
HB 2432, “Sage’s law,” requires any school professional who reasonably suspects a student is at risk of suicide or “is self-identifying as a gender different from the student’s biological sex” to contact at least one of the student’s parents, to notify the parent, and to offer counseling.
The law would allow school staff to avoid this contact only if the student faces an “imminent risk of suicide” as a result of parental abuse or neglect, in which case staff must contact social services.
The law also prohibits any school counselor from hiding gender-identity changes from a parent and from encouraging or forcing children to do so.
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