IRVING, Texas (CITC) — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Tuesday an official at a school district should be fired and his district must be investigated for criminal and civil offenses after the release of an undercover video by the non-profit group Accuracy in Media.
Reny Lizardo, the executive director of campus operations and attendance initatives at the Irving Independent School District, told an undercover Accuracy in Media reporter the district can have “plausible deniability” when questioned whether it has allowed certain athletic participation by transgender students.
A Texas law requires public school students to compete in athletics with those who share their biological sex.
“This Irving ISD Administrator should be fired on the spot. Both criminal & civil investigations must be taken against both the Administrator & Irving ISD,” Gov. Abbott wrote on X. “Has Irving ISD and its employees been involved in a fraudulent breach of state laws & a cover up? We must get the facts.”
The full Accuracy in Media investigatio shows Lizardo saying the district can claim ignorance about a student’s gender if it were sued for letting a student participate in athletics with students born a different sex.
“If a parent found out or a student found out and said, ‘Wait a second. This person isn’t this gender,’ and they, like, sued the district, we’d be in trouble. But, we can also say, ‘We didn’t know’ … So, there’s a plausible deniability, I guess,” Lizardo told the activist, who was posing as the parent of a transgender child as part of an investigation by Accuracy in Media, a group claiming to “hold bad public policy actors accountable.”
“It’s kind of like, who knows this information, and how many – how little amount of people can know it?” Lizardo continued.
He also said the district will accept the gender listed on the student’s birth certificate, regardless of whether the document was changed.
“So, if you can get that done and you turn us a birth certificate that says this gender, that’s the gender we go with,” Lizardo explained.
“I’m not a lawyer and, you know, Texas is super conservative. So, how do I say this legally? If – it’s not illegal if you don’t get caught, right?” the official added.
The district did not immediately return a request for comment from Crisis in the Classroom.
Have questions, concerns or tips? Send them to Ray at rjlewis@sbgtv.com.
