Partisan clash erupts in Missouri Senate education hearing on transgender students

By Annelise Hanshaw

Missouri Independent

What began as a public hearing on a parental rights bill quickly went off the rails on Tuesday as the Missouri Senate Education Committee veered into talk of furries and allegations of homophobia.

The rancor reached its peak after the GOP chair of the committee initiated a discussion of “a trend of furries” in public schools, sparking Democratic state Sen. Maggie Nurrenbern of Kansas City to slam the committee’s priorities as “a joke.”

(Photo- State Sen. Rick Brattin, a Harrisonville Republican, leads the Senate Education Committee in a divisive public hearing Tuesday. Democrats on the committee complained that Brattin was choosing “nonsensical” bills instead of advancing education through the committee’s hearings- Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent)

“We have nearly a million kids in Missouri schools, and I would love just to spend one hearing talking about the issues that are really impacting kids,” Nurrenbern said. 

State Sen. Rick Brattin, a Harrisonville Republican who chairs the committee, flashed a brief smile, responding: “When you become the chair, we will do whatever you want.”

The exchange, unfolding during a contentious hearing Tuesday on legislation prohibiting teachers from identifying transgender students using their preferred names and pronouns, laid bare the frustration of Senate Democrats who argue the committee has become consumed by ideological flashpoints while largely ignoring the structural challenges facing Missouri’s public schools.

“We are fed up,” Nurrenbern told The Independent. “It is hearing after hearing of wasting our time on nonsensical issues, and we want to talk about education.”

Brattin determines which bills receive hearings. And in the opening weeks of the legislative session, the committee has debated giving parents power to sue districts, diversity requirements for a board overseeing high school sports, anti-abortion curriculum for school sex ed classes and use of preferred pronouns for transgender students.

In his second year chairing the education committee, Brattin has not kept his views on public education a secret. In a video shared on social media last year, he criticized “woke indoctrination” in public schools as he advanced a bill that sought to ban critical race theory out of committee.

“It is one thing to get an education, or in many places a lack thereof,” he said in the video. “But getting an education that falls in line with the value system that me as a parent find near and dear is also a critical component of education. So these are things we are trying to move forward.”

His priorities, while decried by the committee’s Democrats, align with the Missouri Republican Party platform, which emphasizes parents’ role directing their children’s education and alleges that some schools attempt to “socially engineer” students.

In contrast to the Senate, the House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee spent the first month of the session debating legislation on teacher certification and gifted education. The House panel began the year with an informational hearing on licensure.

Mike Harris, lobbyist with the Missouri State Teachers Association, said the House committee was “a breath of fresh air” Wednesday during a public hearing over a bill that would reduce repetitive teacher training requirements. He thanked the committee’s chairman “for continuing to focus on issues like teacher recruitment and retention and those pieces of legislation that really impacts student achievement.”

Half of the House committee’s 22 members have direct classroom or school board experience, including the chairman. In the Senate committee, just two of seven members have that kind of experience.

Nurrenbern, a former teacher who served on the House Education Committee before being elected to the Senate in 2024, said the difference between the two chambers is stark.

“While we did have some divisive topics in front of us, we still talked about issues actually impacting education in classrooms,” she said. “And we have yet to do that this year in the Senate Education Committee.”

Brattin, whose office declined an interview request, responded to Democratic critics of the committee’s focus by pointing to passage of the open enrollment bill on Tuesday. Nurrenbern voted no, which Brattin slammed as a vote against allowing students “to get out of failing school districts and get to a school where they could learn.”

Nurrenbern didn’t like how the committee handled that bill, but it was Tuesday’s public hearing — on legislation that would prohibit transgender students from socially transitioning at school — that brought her to her tipping point.

The bill would bar teachers from using students’ preferred names or pronouns and would require schools to fire educators and revoke their licenses if they fail to comply. If a student mentions being transgender, the school would be required to report the conversation to their parents.

The bill’s sponsor state Sen. Joe Nicola, a Republican from Independence, said the legislation is necessary to bar schools from secretly facilitating a students’ social transition.

Opponents called the hearing a distraction from the real work of educating children.

“We are wasting our time yet again targeting children across the state of Missouri,” said Maggie Olivia of Abortion Action Missouri, calling the proceeding “a sham of a hearing.”

Just a week earlier, the committee heard a bill mandating that schools teach human growth and development by the end of third grade using an anti-abortion framework.

That hearing frequently devolved into moral debates over abortion, including Brattin pressing witnesses on whether a fetus should be considered a baby.

Tuesday’s hearing followed a similar path.

As testimony grew heated, committee members sparred with witnesses and each other.

State Sen. Stephen Webber, a Columbia Democrat, challenged an activist opposing transgender rights on broader issues such as gay marriage and nondiscrimination protections, asking whether Republicans’ opposition to those policies amounted to homophobia.

“Do you always question people without good faith?” the witness replied.

Webber accused another witness of wasting the committee’s time.

“This is the most egregious thing I’ve ever seen,” Webber said, though not into the microphone.

“You are the one being disrespectful to the witnesses and calling members of this committee homophobic in your questioning,” Brattin said. “So you’re the one going down this road. You’re the one being disrespectful.”

Nurrenbern said the committee has become “an absolute spectacle.”

West Plains resident Stevie Miller, a former educator, abandoned his prepared remarks as he addressed the committee.

“What are we doing here?” he said. “I had a whole bunch of things to say, but watching this display — what is this? You guys are supposed to be in charge of making laws. And whenever we come up here, you just disregard what you’re actually supposed to be doing in order to attack vulnerable communities.”

The focus on punitive legislation aimed at educators carries real consequences, Otto Fajen, legislative director for the Missouri National Education Association, told senators.

“When you continue to have bills like this before the Senate Education Committee, doing the things you’re trying to do in this fashion, it does get noticed,” he said. “It affects whether people hang on in the profession, and it is another thing that affects whether people choose to go into educator prep programs.”