Tom Tiffany LGBTQ Rights Education Wisconsin

Tom Tiffany's 'Parents' Bill of Rights' Would Make Wisconsin Schools Out Transgender Kids to Their Parents Before Using Their Names

Released as early voting opened, Tiffany's plan would require parental consent before a student can go by a different name or pronouns at school, ban transgender students from the bathrooms and locker rooms that match who they are, and bar 'gender transition procedures' for anyone under 18.

MAGA Report Cards · Oct 26, 2026

Tom Tiffany's 'Parents' Bill of Rights' Would Make Wisconsin Schools Out Transgender Kids to Their Parents Before Using Their Names — Photo: Ruth Conniff / Wisconsin Examiner

With in-person early voting underway and a little over a week left before Election Day, Tom Tiffany, the Republican nominee for governor of Wisconsin, released what he calls a bill of rights for parents and teachers. The Wisconsin Examiner reported what's in it.

Some of it is ordinary school business: twice-a-year progress reports, school report cards, letting parents review lesson materials, telling parents about violence on school grounds. That isn't what makes it news. Tucked in with those items is a list of rules aimed at transgender kids:

Schools would have to notify parents and get their consent before letting a student go by a different name or use different pronouns at school.
Transgender girls would be banned from girls' sports teams, girls' locker rooms and girls' bathrooms.
Schools couldn't put tampons in boys' bathrooms.
"Gender transition procedures" would be banned for everyone under 18.

"Every child deserves a safe classroom, every teacher deserves the authority to maintain order, and every parent deserves to know what is happening in their child's school," Tiffany said in a statement.

What "parental consent" means for a kid who isn't safe at home

The name-and-pronoun rule sounds like a paperwork step. In practice, it means that if a 15-year-old asks a teacher to call her by a different name, the school has to tell her parents first — whether or not she's ready, and whether or not home is a safe place to have that conversation. Under his plan, the school couldn't simply use the name a student asks for.

The stakes are not abstract. In The Trevor Project's 2020 national survey, transgender and nonbinary young people whose pronouns were respected by all or most people in their lives attempted suicide at half the rate of those whose pronouns weren't respected.

Tiffany's plan treats respecting a kid's name at school as something that needs permission.

Wisconsin has already said no to this

None of this is new in Wisconsin. Republicans in the Legislature have introduced parents' bill of rights bills again and again, including the requirement for permission before a student can go by a different name. They had help drafting them from the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty. Governor Tony Evers vetoed them.

In one veto message, Evers called the bill "another attempt to divide our schools and communities and inject political ideology in the very last place it belongs — in our classrooms and our schools."

Tiffany wants to be the governor who makes it law.

This has been his campaign from the start

Tiffany has leaned on cultural fights in schools since he launched his campaign. Right after the Supreme Court ruled that states may ban transgender kids from girls' sports, he promised Wisconsin would if he's elected. Last month, he appeared at a town hall hosted by Moms for Liberty, a right-wing group best known for pushing book bans and targeting schools over their policies on transgender children. Keeping transgender girls out of girls' sports was one of the first priorities he named there.

He has also aimed at the people who run Wisconsin's schools. Tiffany reposted a Libs of TikTok attack on an Eau Claire school board member; she says what followed were accusations and misogynistic messages, and police ended up keeping watch on her home.

His campaign backed up the new plan by pointing to two local stories: a New Richmond school district under investigation by the Trump administration over its bathroom policies, and a Winneconne High School graduation where an 18-year-old — an adult — was allowed to use a preferred name.

His opponent, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, has built his education platform around more money for public schools, including special education, and universal early childhood education.

What the record shows

Tom Tiffany's plan would require Wisconsin schools to get a parent's consent before calling a student by a different name or pronouns, ban transgender students from the bathrooms, locker rooms and girls' teams that match who they are, and ban "gender transition procedures" for everyone under 18. Governor Tony Evers has vetoed the Legislature's parents' bill of rights bills, including their rule requiring permission before a student can go by a different name. Tiffany is campaigning to make it law.