WASHINGTON — The House passed a bill late Wednesday to force public school teachers to out transgender students to their parents.

It wasn’t a party-line vote, either: Eight Democrats voted for it.

Democratic Reps. Henry Cuellar (Texas), Donald Davis (N.C.), Cleo Fields (La.), Laura Gillen (N.Y.), Vicente Gonzalez (Texas), Marcy Kaptur (Ohio), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Wash.) and Eugene Vindman (Va.) all voted for this bill.

What’s more, three of those Democrats — Gillen, Gluesenkamp Perez and Vindman — are members of the Congressional Equality Caucus, which advocates for LGBTQ+ rights.

The Republican bill they just supported, the Stopping Indoctrination and Protecting Kids Act, requires elementary and middle schools to get parental consent before changing a student’s pronouns or preferred names on any school forms, or for making gender-based accommodations for things like locker rooms or bathrooms.

It also bars teachers from talking about transgender people or issues in the classroom, which means books that include transgender characters or that address the existence of transgender people would be banned. It would also ban LGBTQ+ school groups.

The bill is built around the phrase “gender ideology” as defined in President Donald Trump’s January 2025 executive order, “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” This is not a term used by the LGBTQ+ community, but by conservatives who claim being transgender is ideological versus an intrinsic identity.

HuffPost reached out to all eight Democrats who voted for the bill. Most did not immediately respond to the request for comment.

“As a dad to two public school kids, I believe parents must be included in their children’s decisions in school,” Vindman said in a statement.

“Whether it’s what they put on their school forms, their academic performance, or athletics, parents need to be at the center because that is the key to every child’s success,” he said. “There are other policies in the bill I don’t agree with and will work to change, but I voted today to make sure parents like me can continue to support their kids at school, and I believe to my core that is what our kids need.”

All but Fields represent swing districts, with Cuellar, Davis, Gonzalez, Kaptur and Gluesenkamp Perez considered particularly vulnerable in November’s election. (Fields’ safely Democratic district is likely to be eliminated by GOP gerrymandering, though he could choose to run for reelection in a far more conservative seat.)

Republicans, who have seen the public turn against them on major issues like inflation and immigration, continue to believe they have an advantage on transgender issues ― particularly when it relates to how they are handled in schools and in kids’ sports. All of the vulnerable Democrats are likely to face attack ads on transgender issues in the fall.

Here’s a copy of the bill, which is co-sponsored by Reps. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) and Burgess Owens (R-Utah):

Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus and a 24-year educator, said the bill puts transgender youth at serious risk. He noted that 40% of homeless youth are LGBTQ+, and it’s largely because they’ve been rejected by their families.

“Republicans claim to be the party of small government, but they have no problem bringing the full force of the federal government down against children,” Takano said in a statement. “The GOP thinks they can legislate transgender people out of existence with this inhumane ‘Don’t Say Trans’ bill, but all they’re doing is making life worse for a small minority of already-vulnerable children.”

Separately, a caucus spokesperson declined to comment on three of its members voting for the bill.

Walberg, meanwhile, hailed House passage of his legislation, saying it will stop schools that are “sidelining parents and concealing critical information about their children, replacing parental authority with bureaucratic control.”

The bill isn’t likely to pass the Senate, if it even comes up there. Several Democratic senators would have to vote with Republicans to bring up the bill in the first place, to clear the 60-vote filibuster, and there’s no reason to believe they would. Beyond that, outing transgender kids doesn’t exactly top the list of voters’ concerns about affordability, the Iran war and President Donald Trump’s corrupt self-enrichment. The Senate is currently tied up on a $72 billion budget reconciliation package and active efforts to end the Iran war.

Tyler Hack, executive director of the Christopher Street Project, which helps elect transgender people to office, said the House vote simply marks “yet another escalation in Republicans’ sick obsession with criminalizing queer people and trans youth.”

“Every student deserves the dignity and freedom to decide when — and to whom — they share who they are,” Hack said in a statement. “At a time when politicians should be focused on lowering costs and supporting working families, they are instead targeting queer and trans people — using them as political props in a cynical strategy to divide the country.”

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