A video shows a former Texas local school administrator apparently advising an undercover journalist on how to bypass the Save Women’s Sports Act by having a birth certificate altered before moving to the state.
Accuracy in Media released the video January 28 showing Reny Lizardo, executive director of Campus operations for the Irving Independent School District, telling the journalist if the gender on a child’s birth certificate is changed before moving to Texas, the child can play on the sports team of their choosing.
Under the 2023 law, Texas does not permit birth certificates to be altered. But other states do. The Texas law, signed by Gov. Greg Abbott, says a student must play on the team that corresponds with the gender listed on the student’s birth certificate.
Last year, Accuracy in Media says it sent undercover journalists posing as parents to several Texas school districts to determine whether administrators were complying with the law.
“It’s not illegal if you don’t get caught,” Lizardo says in the video.
When AIM President Adam Guillette later talks to Lizardo, he denied making such recommendations to a parent.
Lizardo resigned from his position on January 29, less than a day after Abbott made a post about the undercover video on X formerly Twitter.
“This Irving ISD Administrator should be fired on the spot,” Abbott wrote with a link to the video. “Both criminal & civil investigations must be taken against both the Administrator & Irving ISD.
“Has Irving ISD and its employees been involved in a fraudulent breach of state laws & a cover up? We must get the facts.”
Abbott's press secretary echoed those sentiments.
"Biological boys have no business competing against biological girls, and Governor Abbott has made it clear that we must protect the integrity of girl’s sports," Andrew Mahaleris told The Record. "This school administrator should be fired, and he and Irving ISD should be investigated for violations of state law."
In the undercover video, Lizardo was talking to someone posing as the parent of a transgender child for AIM, which says it works to “hold bad public policy actors accountable.”
“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,” Lizardo said in the video. “But, we can also say, ‘We didn’t know' ... So, there’s a plausible deniability, I guess …
“It’s kind of like, who knows this information, and how many … how little amount of people can know it?”
Lizardo also tells the activist that the school district accepts the gender listed on the birth certificate regardless of it was changed somewhere.
“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 said. “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?”
AIM also created a website for concerned citizens to email the relevant elected officials and demand they take action against the administrators in question.
Following a similar investigation into Texas K-12 public schools, AIM says teachers and administrators at all education levels continue “to teach Critical Race Theory and the radical 1619 Project despite state laws banning this material from public education curriculums.”
Previously, AIM said administrators from the Richardson and Dallas Independent school districts had tried to help parents get their biological male children to play on female sports teams. He said a Richardson ISD official even told him a biological male could share a hotel room with girls on a school trip if they received permission from parents.
“I personally have been in over 100 school districts across Texas and over 250 across the country,” Guilette told The Record. “And it never ceases to amaze me just how horribly radical these administrators really are. I’ve been to a lot of states, and Texas is the second worst regarding administrators who think they’re above the law and can do whatever the hell they want.
“I mean, we just come in off the street. We’re effective in our investigative tactics, but they just start telling us this stuff that quickly. It leads me to wonder what they are doing that we don’t know about.”
Guilette said AIM went to a teacher’s union conference where an attorney was teaching them on how to break this law.
“It just says to me they’ve probably been coached on it,” he told The Record. “What’s abundantly clear is that these laws aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on as long as these radicals can do whatever the hell they want.”
Guilette says he thinks school choice is the answer to the problem.
“If you have a kid in traditional public schools, I would get them the hell out immediately,” he said. “I’ve talked to many people who live in conservative areas who tell me their school district isn’t like that. That they’ve talked to the principal or other officials and feel good about it. But then, I meet those same people who brag about how they lied to you.
"It's clear that Irving ISD – like many Texas school districts – has no respect for parents and no respect for the law. Rather than reaching out to us, which they agreed to do, Irving ISD has been blocking parents on social media and deleting their comments. This is illegal, and Accuracy In Media's attorneys are taking action."