Indiana Senate Bill 143 (a bill currently pending approval by the Indiana senate) states that schools may not deny a parent access to “certain information” and allows a parent to sue the school in question if they deny them access to this information and that governmental entities including schools are not permitted to “substantially burden” a parent on decisions around their child’s upbringing which includes religious instruction, education, and healthcare.
At first it may seem fairly obvious what this bill will do, because this “certain information” could be anything from a nickname to the student’s pronouns and/or sexuality. Additionally, this bill reduces the rights of minors overall by essentially giving their parents a legal license to spy on their children through proxies. This was most aptly noted by Chris Daley, the executive director for the Indiana chapter of the ACLU who pointed out that this bill seems to be directly ignoring restrictions on how much the government can infringe on a minor’s privacy stating, “There are restrictions on how much the government can intrude on minors’ privacy.
SB 143 does not recognize, much less balance, those rights.” It is important to note that the language of this bill is vague to the point where the “certain information” could be a massive range of things, as the ACLU points out. “This is an incredibly broad bill that does not properly balance its goals against the privacy rights of minors. Further, the bill provides no protection for a government employee concerned that disclosing certain information to a child’s parent or parents will put that child’s safety at risk.”
It is important to note that this bill was authored and is sponsored by Republicans and the Republican party tends to be very opposed to transgender rights. There is already a bill (HB 1608) in place that requires schools to tell parents their child’s gender identity. It isn’t a new bill either – HB 1608 has been in effect since 2023. So, why put forward a seemingly redundant bill?
The broadness of the bill makes it hard to determine what it covers. The only thing that is even close to certain is that this bill likely wasn’t designed to increase “parental rights.” While Senator Liz Brown, the author of the bill, claims otherwise stating, “Parents are frustrated and rightly so, when they have to play second fiddle to the government.” However, a supporter of the bill, a father named Matthew Cook, argued that this bill would ensure that “if a child happens to find themselves in some kind of counseling situation, the staff within that counseling situation cannot persuade that child of God to change their gender,” according to The Statehouse File.com
However, there is a far more likely explanation for why this bill was put forward.
A pattern that has been common in center-right groups and parties is posturing. Essentially, these groups will do something which provides little to no benefit but looks like it provides a massive benefit (at least to the groups that they want to appeal to). Additionally, these actions can be harmful depending on the intended appeal. Left of center groups and parties do this as well, in fact, the best example of posturing in U.S history is the Space Race which was expensive and mostly pointless for both the U.S and Soviet Union, but made citizens of both countries prideful whenever their countries succeeded in one way or another. However, posturing seems to occur more frequently in right leaning circles. For example, Donald Trump’s targeting of migrants during his first and current term doesn’t provide any real benefits, if anything all it does is hurt people and cause more economic problems. But because his base wants an easy answer for why food prices are growing and why the economy seems to be going down, this group of people then vote for this because this posturing gives them an easy solution and makes them feel like something is being done about the problems that are affecting them.
It certainly wouldn’t be the first time. In 2022 the Indiana High School Athletic Association determined that student athletes had to participate on the sports team that aligned with the gender they were assigned at birth. The Indiana legislature then passed HB 1041 which did the same thing. This bill was utterly pointless.
So ultimately this bill is worthless. It is just another case of posturing by a party that has thrown most of its support behind hate. But do not think that just because it is posturing that it is not still profoundly dangerous. Examples of how dangerous this can be have shown up throughout Trump’s administrations and it is important to call this kind of thing out for what it is. It is hate, it is cruelty, and it has no place in any nation that espouses freedom as one of its core principles.
The bill was signed by the president of the Indiana Senate April 15.
