DALLAS — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sent a letter to two Dallas-area school districts demanding a list of documents to investigate whether the schools were allowing transgender athletes to compete in girls’ sports.
Paxton sent a letter on Tuesday to both the Dallas Independent School District and Irving Independent School District requesting multiple documents, including any communication between district employees where they talk about determining a student’s eligibility to participate in school sports.
In the letters, Paxton alleged that employees at both districts were filmed “advising parents as to how the school district would consider a change of sex on a birth certificate for a student in determining eligibility to participate in sports.”
Both of the employees Paxton mentioned were filmed by an undercover investigator posing as a parent for the conservative watchdog group Accuracy in Media (AIM), according to multiple news outlets.
One of the employees, Irving ISD’s Executive Director of Campus Operations Reny Lizardo, has since resigned. According to Paxton’s letter, Lizardo told the undercover person that the district “would not check if the parent were to change the birth certificate of their son to indicate ‘female’ so as to enable that male student to participate in interscholastic sports for young women.”
Gov. Greg Abbott later reposted the video on X and said that criminal and civil investigations should begin against Lizardo and Irving ISD.
The Dallas ISD employee named in the letter was LGBT Youth Program Coordinator Mahoganie Gaston.
A video from AIM showed Gaston talking with the person posing as a parent and allegedly advising them to update their child’s birth certificate from “male” to “female” in order to circumvent Texas law.
In the video, Gaston said she was willing to go to jail for defying Texas law.
Current Texas law bans transgender athletes assigned male at birth from competing in girls’ and women’s sports at both the K-12 and collegiate levels.
“Any systematic effort by a school district to sidestep state law and allow biological boys to play in girls’ sports in Texas will be rooted out, and my office will explore all avenues to hold those responsible to account,” said Paxton in a news release.
Back in December, Paxton sued the NCAA over its policies allowing transgender athletes to compete in women’s sports.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday banning transgender athletes from competing in girls’ and women’s sports.
