{"id":81327,"date":"2025-12-09T04:52:27","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T04:52:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/81327\/"},"modified":"2025-12-09T04:52:27","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T04:52:27","slug":"houston-isd-agrees-to-settle-federal-lawsuit-with-bellaire-hs-parents-who-sued-over-preferred-pronoun-use-houston-public-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/81327\/","title":{"rendered":"Houston ISD agrees to settle federal lawsuit with Bellaire HS parents who sued over preferred pronoun use \u2013 Houston Public Media"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\"Hattie<\/a><\/p>\n

Adam Zuvanich\/Houston Public Media<\/p>\n

Community members walk into Hattie Mae White Educational Support Center for a school board meeting on Thursday, Aug. 15, 2024.<\/p>\n

Houston ISD has agreed to settle a federal lawsuit filed by two Bellaire High School parents who sued the district earlier this year for allegedly continuing to use their child’s preferred pronouns despite requests from the parents not to do so.<\/p>\n

A settlement agreement signed by the parents, HISD Superintendent Mike Miles and their attorneys was filed Friday in court, as first reported by the Houston Chronicle. The agreement had not been signed by a judge as of Monday afternoon, court records show.<\/p>\n

HISD agreed to direct staff at Bellaire, where the student is enrolled, to use pronouns that align with the student\u2019s sex at birth. The parents agreed to “release, acquit and forever discharge … any and all claims” against the school district, which is denying all claims and allegations made by the parents as part of the agreement.<\/p>\n

Sign up for the Hello, Houston!<\/a> daily newsletter to get local reports like this delivered directly to your inbox.<\/p>\n

“HISD agrees to direct all professional employees \u2026 assigned to BHS to address the [parents\u2019] daughter only by her given name or a nickname based on her given name and by female pronouns while their daughter is a minor and enrolled in HISD,” the agreement states.<\/p>\n

RELATED: Parents sue Houston ISD in federal court for allegedly using their child’s preferred pronouns<\/a><\/p>\n

The lawsuit, filed in federal court on June 23, pertained to a student who had asked teachers to refer to them with masculine he\/him pronouns. The parents claimed that upon discovering their child was using a different name and pronouns, they repeatedly spoke with various teachers and administrators to express their objection.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit was filed with assistance from Alliance Defending Freedom, a nonprofit committed to \u201cprotecting religious freedom, free speech, the sanctity of life, marriage and family, and parental rights,\u201d according to its website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cParents have the right to direct the upbringing, education, and health care of their children without fear of government interference,” Kate Anderson, director of Alliance Defending Freedom\u2019s Center for Parental Rights, said in a Monday statement released by the organization.<\/p>\n

Houston ISD did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

Neither HISD nor Texas at large has any policies related directly to gender identity and preferred pronoun use. Multiple Houston-area school districts \u2014 Fort Bend ISD<\/a>, Cy-Fair ISD<\/a> and Katy ISD<\/a> \u2014 have passed controversial policies regulating the usage of pronouns and requiring that parents be informed if their child identifies as transgender or asks to use pronouns that differ from their sex at birth. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Adam Zuvanich\/Houston Public Media Community members walk into Hattie Mae White Educational Support Center for a school board…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35740,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[39450,25807,2441,163,1182,11358,1187,4045,56,58,1686,57,1183,66,223],"class_list":{"0":"post-81327","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-alliance-defending-freedom","9":"tag-bellaire-high-school","10":"tag-court","11":"tag-education","12":"tag-education-news","13":"tag-federal-lawsuit","14":"tag-gender-identity","15":"tag-hisd","16":"tag-houston","17":"tag-houston-headlines","18":"tag-houston-isd","19":"tag-houston-news","20":"tag-lgbtq","21":"tag-local","22":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81327\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}