Texas Governor Wants Constitutional Amendment to Punish βNon-Human Behaviorsβ in Schools
Summary: In the US, Republicans have introduced the third and fourth bills this year that would ban students from being furries in public schools, with a pair of identical texts introduced as Texas House Bill 54 and HB 4814. Called the F.U.R.R.I.E.S. Act, these bills propose to amend the Texas Constitution to prohibit students from displaying βnon-human behaviorsβ at school, to call schools that allow it abusive, and to punish the schools with expensive fines. Texas Governor Greg Abbott spoke approvingly of the bill and claimed it was in response to schools supposedly letting students behave as animals and use litter boxes. That was a debunked urban legend that Republicans invented in 2021. The purpose of the urban legend and the bills is to satirize transgender students who ask to use the right restrooms for their genders, and to justify defunding public schools in favor of private schools. Republicans oppose education for people other than the wealthy, and oppose allowing LGBTQIA people to exist. Below, find out more about what these bills mean and what you can do about them.
What the F.U.R.R.I.E.S. Act bill says
On March 14, Republican Representative Stan Gerdes introduced Texas House Bill 54. He also filed an identical copy of it under another number, Texas House Bill 4814, on March 13.
The bill text itself says it is βentitled an act relating to the display of and allowance for non-human behaviors in Texas schools β¦ This bill may be referred to as the Forbidding Unlawful Representation of Roleplaying in Educational Spaces or F.U.R.R.I.E.S. Act,β Section 1, found on page 1 of the bill.
The bill proposes several amendments to the Texas Constitution. First, it would amend the Education Code to βprohibit any non-human behavior by a student, including presenting himself or herself, on days other than exempt days, as anything other than a human being,β section 2(a)(10), found on page 3. Exempt days mean no more than five holidays or school events, section 2(a)(5), found on page 4. It makes exceptions for animal costumes as sports mascots and school plays, for some examples.
The bill gives specific examples of what its author considers to be nonhuman behavior that it would prohibit students from doing at schools. Some that it specifies are wearing tails, leashes, collars, ears, meowing or making other animal sounds, or using litter boxes, in section 2(a)(6), found on pages 5 through 6.
The Texas bill would furthermore amend the Family Code to redefine abuse to specify that it includes βan education setting, allowing or encouraging the child to develop a dependance on or a belief that non-human behaviors are societally acceptable,β section 5(1)(A), found on page 7.
To punish violations, the bill would impose βa fine against the district not to exceed $10,000 for a first violation or $25,000 for any subsequent violations,β section 6(f), found on page 10.
The bill's basis on an urban legend and how that differs from any real-life students or their hobbies
The part about litter boxes in the Texas bill is a reference to an urban legend that Republicans began circulating in late 2021 and 2022. The legend alleges that certain public schools are letting students that the legend calls βfurriesβ use litter boxes because they identify as animals. The fact-checking sites Reuters, PolitiFact, and Snopes have all debunked it: all the schools deny that any of their students use litter boxes and that they havenβt had any other disruptive animal-like behavior or any awareness of students being furries. The urban legend is meant to satirize public schools that allow transgender students to use the restrooms for their genders (Reuters, 2022; Czopek, 2022; Palma, 2023). Journalists discovered that the only school district in the nation that stocked cat litter was that of Columbine High School, not for a purpose as the urban legend described, but βas part of βgo bucketsβ that contain emergency supplies in case students are locked in a classroom during a shootingβ (Kingkade et al, 2022), along with other first aid and cleanup supplies, as an option if a lockdown cuts off access to restrooms for too many hours (Garcia, 2017). Before the anti-furry bills started, community historian House of Chimeras anticipated that the urban legend could later become important, so they had researched it in depth and presented a lecture about it at a convention, which is recommended viewing if you want to learn more about it: βLitter Boxes in School Bathrooms: Dissecting the Alt-Rightβs Current Moral Panic.β
In the past few years in real life, there has been a youth fad for doing athletic stunts on all fours (quadrobics), crafting and wearing animal masks and tails from craft store supplies, and making animal sounds. People show off this hobby online in places such as on the video clip sharing social media app TikTok, and it has spread internationally past language barriers. Some quadrobists identify as animals and/or call themselves therianthropes, but those arenβt the same thing. Quadrobics is a hobby about crafts and sports that anyone nimble enough can engage in, whereas therianthropy is an intrinsic identification as an animal. Therianthropes are real people who identify as animals, so that does exist, and they have had a community since about 1993, but the urban legend wasn't based on them. Quadrobics is popular with young therianthropes, but older therianthropes typically have never engaged in any aspect of quadrobics and are firm that they donβt need to wear tails or ears to have an intrinsically animal inner self.
The furry fandom is for people who like making art and stories about talking animals. Some therianthropes are also involved in the furry fandom, but surveys of the furry fandom show that most people who call themselves furries donβt identify as animals (Plante et al, 2016, pp. 113-114).
Quadrobists, therianthropy, and the furry fandom arenβt about using litter boxes. The urban legend isnβt genuinely based on quadrobists, therianthropes, or furries. It wasn't any of their faults, and though it may hurt them, they arenβt its target. The urban legend's target is to satirize transgender people and to justify defunding public schools.
What the Governor of Texas said about the F.U.R.R.I.E.S. Act
Texas Governor Greg Abbott spoke in public this week as though this urban legend was true and was the reason for this proposed legislation. The Houston Chronicle reports that this is part of the Governorβs
βcriticism of public schools in recent weeks as he pitches a program allowing public money to be spent on private education, which the governor has made his signature policy push this session. The governor has cast private school vouchers as an option for parents turned off by what he called βthe pervasive woke leftist agenda that's being forced on our kids in our public schools.ββ
One example of what Abbott meant by this were schools that allow transgender students to participate in sports or be called by their preferred names and pronouns. He has called for schools to be investigated for allowing that. Together with furries, the Governor said this was βwhy parents should be able to access state funds to send their children to private schoolsβ by means of a statewide private school voucher program (Wermund, 2025). He admits that his voucher program would result in less money for public schools by draining it away from them (Wermund and McKinley, 2025). That would also make it harder for disabled children to access education at all (RA Staff, Mar. 6, 2025). In the US, most children go to public schools, which the government provides to all families for free, whereas private schools are exclusive to families who can afford them, are usually religious, and offer fewer legal protections for their students. We at Otherkin News have previously written in more depth about why Republicans are using the urban legend and these bills to oppose public schools, which you can read here: Scribner and Sol, Feb. 18, 2024.
In regard to what the Governor said about this bill, independent furry news blogger Patch OβFurr of Dogpatch Press remarked that this
βisn't about furries, that's a pretext they [Republicans] invented out of thin air in order to transfer public resources into private pockets. This impoverishes education for all who use public schooling. In case you missed it, private schooling is exclusiveβ
and Republicans are βmerging panic about trans athletes and the furry-litterbox hoax as pretextual propaganda for the tip of this spearβ (OβFurr, March 15, 2025; OβFurr, March 14, 2025). Although these urban legends and bills could have consequences for student hobbies, the main purpose is to fabricate a moral panic that will excite the Republican voter base (OβFurr, March 13, 2025). Even if the bill did pass into law and had consequences for students, the students or schools could sue and point to their Constitutional right to freedom of expression, to the degree that they donβt conflict with the schoolβs own policies to maintain a peaceful learning environment. That Constitutional right isnβt protected for students in private schools.
Who wrote the bill, and what is its context with that authorβs other motivations?
- make it so that food stamps will cover fewer types of foods and drinks (HB 5243), which is presented as being about promoting healthier food choices in a paternalistic way, and is a step toward limiting or getting rid of food stamps altogether, which are crucial for keeping low-income families from starvation
- force public school rooms to prominently display a religious text, the Ten Commandments (HB 1009), even though these are government facilities and so arenβt supposed to promote a religion
require a Nativity scene to be displayed on state capitol grounds during December (HB 1497), which is also about making government facilities promote Christianity in particular
- forbid governmental entities from having anti-discrimination training, specifically about βtransgender ideology,β βanti-racism,β and a long list of βwokeβ buzzwords (HB 4552)
- increase minimum prison time to ten years as punishment for intoxication manslaughter, mainly meaning when a drunk driver accidentally kills someone (HB 2017), which is less effective for preventing tragic accidents than it is for building a larger population of prison laborers, in other words, slavery for profit
- to make the anniversary of the fall of Roe v. Wade an official state holiday in memory of aborted fetuses (HB 911), which would express that the government has a stance against abortion, and by extension, against contraception and womenβs health care in general
These are only a few of Gerdesβs other bills. Some of them could also be meant as satirical bills that heβs using to make a point rather than expecting them to pass. The theme that emerges is not only deadly hatred toward all people who arenβt just the same as himself, but also his hatred of one of Americaβs central values, the separation of church and state, and expressing a desire to instead impose his own form of Christianity as the state religion, which is a form of tyranny that the founders had hoped to prevent.
Gerdesβs anti-furry bills are the third and fourth such in the US this year. There is also the Oklahoma House Bill 1327, which is an identical reused text from last year by sole sponsor Republican Representative Justin Humphrey. Heβs known for writing satirical bills to distract from serious ones or poke fun at serious issues. He sometimes edits them later to make them more serious and stand a chance of passing into law. This bill proposes to have children who say theyβre animals picked up from school by animal control, though he says he would consider changing that to a mental institution. Last year, he had said that this was his βcrazy billβ which he was using to make βa sarcastic point.β Weβre meant to gather that his point is about what he thinks of transgender people, which he has spoken against. Heβs also against the American public school system and wants it replaced with private schools (Jones, 2024; Scribner and Sol, 2024 February 9). Humphreyβs bill this year is still at 25% progression and had its second reading referred to Rules on February 4; last yearβs version of it died. You can learn much more about the text and context of this bill by reading the deep dive that we bloggers did about last yearβs version of it (Scribner and Sol, 2024 February 9).
Another anti-furry bill died in committee on February 4, 2025. That was Mississippi House Bill 1060, which would βrequire school personnel to notify parents of students who request [sic] to be referred to as different gender or nonhuman.β It had been sponsored by eleven Republican Representatives. The bill text itself only talked about transgender students, apparently having had the other parts deleted before it was introduced. You can learn more in our previous article about it (Scribner, 2025 January 18).
After the litter box urban legend in late 2021 and 2022, Republicans began introducing anti-furry bills in 2023 with North Dakota House Bill 1522, Oklahoma Senate Bill 943, Indiana Statehouse Bill 380, and a proposed amendment to Montana Senate Bill 544. 2024 had Oklahoma House Bill 3084, Mississippi House Bill 176, and Missouri House Bill 2678. During the past three years, Republicans have introduced a total of eleven anti-furry bills so far. No anti-furry bills have yet passed into law as such. Fellow volunteers and I have been reporting on these in the Otherkin News blog all along, which you can read in the tag for that purpose.
What can you do about anti-furry bills?
In regard to the three anti-furry bills that are active, what can you do about them? Keep in mind that these bills are a small part of Republican efforts to get rid of public schools and to get rid of transgender people. Do what you can to protect public schools and transgender youth.
If you live in either of the states in question, Texas and Oklahoma, then you can contact your elected representatives to explain why you think these bills are bad. Part of your job as a voter is to tell your reps what you think. Their job is to represent you, that is, to listen to you and make your opinion part of their decisions.
You can find out who your reps are with a free tool called BallotReady.org. First, put in your street address where youβre registered to vote and click βget started.β You donβt need to give it your email. Next, click βmeet your representatives.β Then click βstate.β Under someoneβs name, it will say that theyβre with the state House of Representatives, or the Senate. Then click βcontactβ to see how to reach them by phone or email. If this tool doesnβt have that information for that person, or you want to fax them instead, click βlearn moreβ to see that personβs website. When you contact your rep, briefly tell them your name, county, zip code, the number of the bill, and then your opinion against it.
If you live in those states or anywhere else in the US, you can also do these things:
- If you or your friends or family members are teens, read any of these three books about legal rights in public schools. What are My Rights? Q&A about Teens and the Law by Judge Tom Jacobs; Girls Resist! A Guide to Activism, Leadership, and Starting a Revolution by Kaelyn Rich; and Know Your Rights and Claim Them: A Guide for Youth, by Amnesty International. Get copies of them into your libraries.
- If youβre an adult, attend school board meetings, which are open to the public. Listen and voice your questions and concerns. Republicans have been making bad things happen by doing that, even at schools where they donβt have any children.
- Donate to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which protects freedom of expression in public schools in the US and challenges laws that hurt LGBTQIA families.
- Write letters of thanks and appreciation to people who are doing good things in school boards and legislation. Encourage them to keep up the good work and that you value what theyβre doing for everyone.
- For keeping up with news about legislation that could have an impact on transgender people in the US, follow the award-winning blog for that purpose by independent journalist Erin Reed.
No matter where in the world you live, you can do these things:
- Share this article with your friends who live in Texas so that they're informed about this issue and their power to contact their representatives. (This isn't a self-promotion thing, my blog is obscure and I'm fine with that, what's important is helping people get accurate information about what's happening and what they can do.)
- If a friend repeats the litter box urban legend, even though you already know itβs not true, suggest in a more gentle way, βIβve heard that around too, I wonder where it came from and which parts of it are right. Letβs look it up on Snopes together to find out.β People get stubborn if you bluntly tell them theyβre wrong, but exploring something youβre both curious about is something that you can enjoy together.
- Sharpen your own media literacy so you donβt fall for urban legends either. Explore news stories through both of those fact checking sites. Donβt be afraid to research claims that you hear about on social media or from the people around you.
America's eleventh anti-furry bill, TX HB 54, a proposed amendment to the Texas Constitution which calls itself the F.U.R.R.I.E.S. Act, has support from the Governor, highlighting his views on many other issues and those of other Republican legislators. Republican politicians are so interested in putting their time and effort into fabricate crude satire about furries-- without caring that it has been debunked-- because these are part of their tools and plans to eradicate transgender people, defund public schools, make education less accessible to low-income families and disabled youth, and destroy the separation of church and state. It's not useful to try to decide which group of people is harmed the worst by some form of oppression or discrimination, because even mere jokes about interest groups and hobbies can be tools against many other marginalized peoples. Nobody did anything to deserve this. Let the knowledge of this context motivate you toward solidarity with one another and taking real actions-- phone calls to your representatives and more-- to save the schools and other governmental institutions that many of us in our society depend upon.
About the author: This blog post was written by Orion Scribner (they/them), who has been a community historian and archivist for more than ten years.
