Bayliss WagnerAustin American-Statesman
On a balmy Thursday night in February, Frank Zamora was at home in San Antonio, writing a pros and cons list.
The Texas state agency where he worked had given him an ultimatum: remove your pronouns from your work email signature or lose your job. The agencywide policy came down Feb. 3, days after Gov. Greg Abbott ordered state agencies to “comply with the law and the biological reality that there are only two sexes —male and female.”
If he stayed, Zamora would keep a steady paycheck, a team he loved and a stellar supervisor. He'd continue to do work he appreciated and excelled at, according to glowing performance reviews in his file.
But in the end, Zamora, who was born male and identifies as such, couldn’t get past one glaring item on the “con” list: what it would mean for him to give in.
So the next morning, he told his supervisors at the Texas Real Estate Commission that he would neither remove his pronouns nor resign. He was terminated before noon.
Confirmed through open records requests by the American-Statesman, Zamora's firing is among the first examples of how state agencies have responded to Abbott’s order limiting expanded definitions of gender. The Republican governor sent his notice to agency heads along with an order banning diversity, equity and inclusion practices on Jan. 30, modeling them after President Donald Trump’s mandates to federal agencies.
In the federal inauguration-day executive order cited in Abbott’s Jan. 30 letter, Trump slammed “gender ideology” as a leftist worldview that perpetuates “the false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa” and requires “all institutions of society to regard this false claim as true.”
The federal and state crackdown on language marking gender identity comes as conservative lawmakers lead an effort to roll back trans rights, particularly in Texas, one of several U.S. states that banned gender transition medical care for minors in 2023 and where a new proposal to bar transgender people from using public bathrooms of the opposite sex has been filed this legislative session.
It also comes as both Abbott and Trump have similarly targeted state and federal agencies, public universities and schools for DEI practices, in some cases prompting confusion about how to comply.
More: One year under SB 17: A timeline of how Texas' anti-DEI law swept through UT, the state
In a Feb. 3 email blast, the Real Estate Commission director ordered staff members at two agencies responsible for regulating realtors and appraisers to remove pronouns, writing that the change was “based on a recent directive from Governor Abbott."
“I understand this change may have an impact on employees and I am sensitive to that,” wrote Chelsea Buchholtz, who heads the commission and the Texas Appraiser Licensing and Certification Board, in the email. “The Governor, however, has directed the agency to act and so we will.”
Abbott’s Jan. 30 letter, however, does not specify how agencies should ensure they are in compliance, leaving room for interpretation. There is no mention of preferred pronouns.
When asked for comment, Abbott’s office referred the Statesman to the Jan. 30 directive without addressing Zamora’s firing.
Zamora, a member of the LGBTQ+ community, sees Abbott’s directive and the state agency’s implementation of it as a bid to deny that trans people exist, "part of a broader effort to make LGBT+ people feel unwelcome in the state of Texas."
“I could not, in good conscience, contribute to those actions in any way — no matter how small," Zamora told the Statesman.
At the same time, the 32-year-old feels his firing and the agency directive bear a sense of the absurd.
“There have been multiple occasions when I stop and I ask myself, 'Is this really happening?’” he said in an interview two weeks after he was fired. “I mean, I'm talking about pronouns. That someone should be fired over it, that it's become this politicized and this weaponized, is not only ridiculous, but a little bit laughable.”
It’s unclear whether other state agencies have similar policies regarding pronouns, as Abbott's letter did not mention them.
A Real Estate Commission spokesperson declined to clarify which executive order prompted the agency to ban preferred pronouns in email signatures, but she reaffirmed that Abbott’s order played into the decision.
“As a Texas state agency within the executive branch, we follow Gov. Abbott's directives,” spokeswoman Summer Mandell, wrote in an email to the Statesman. She declined to comment specifically on Zamora’s firing, saying the agency does not comment on personnel matters.
More: Why a lifelong USAID officer, ambassador in Texas warn dismantling the agency is a mistake
How Zamora lost his job
During his three years at the commission, Zamora worked as an education specialist, helping certify courses that teach Texans how to become Realtors and answering questions from the public about how to obtain those certifications.
Though he had long disagreed with state leaders' positions on LGBTQ+ issues, the Feb. 3 agency order to remove pronouns was the first time Zamora felt partisan politics had intruded on his work.
The night he received the agency directive, Zamora penned a letter to Buchholtz and his direct supervisors explaining why he opposed the new policy.Though Zamora is not trans, he had added pronouns to his email signature the previous week in solidarity with nonbinary, intersex and transgender Texans, he noted.
On Feb. 6, the agency sent him a "notice of corrective action" stating he needed to change his email signature to comply with agency rules. Several supervisors told him in a video call that he had three options: remove the pronouns, resign or face termination, he said.
Zamora was fired the next day for “failure to comply with an agency directive and failure to comply with agency policy and procedure," according to termination documents obtained through a public records request.
In his most recent annual performance review, Zamora’s supervisor had rated him 3.82 out of 4 for his work, saying he “exceeded expectations" and was "an essential member of the division." She praised him for being punctual and “dependable,” “always offering his time to new projects” and “car(ing) about the customers."
The agency approved the supervisor's request that he earn a $1,800 merit raise in February 2024, bringing Zamora’s annual salary to $42,000 per year.
“I know that had this order not been passed down, then I'd still be working there. I'd still be working with people that I enjoy working with," Zamora said.
Ilesa Daniels, president of the Texas State Employees Union, which represents nearly 10,000 state employees and retirees, expressed confusion over why pronouns are seen as an issue.
"We think diversity is a strength as opposed to a weakness," Daniels said in a phone interview. "As far as people being able to use the pronouns that they choose to use, I'm not sure how that affects anyone other than them."
First Amendment questions
Zamora does not plan to pursue legal action for his firing. According to legal experts the Statesman spoke to, it is unclear whether Zamora’s firing or similar terminations would stand up in court.
Austin labor and employment lawyer Kell Simon said that public employees might have a First Amendment claim when the government limits their speech to the public about a matter of public concern. Gender identity would fall into that category, he argues.
"The legal question that it brings up is, 'Does everybody have a First Amendment right to present their pronouns?'" he said.
The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, which found discrimination based on gender identity violates federal civil rights law, could also dictate a ruling in a case about pronoun firings, said Houston-based labor and employment attorney Ronald Dupree.
"Any employer, public or private, has a certain degree of leeway with how to manage their workforce,” Dupree said. “But if the order from the employer conflicts with a right that has been established by the courts, that's when legal challenges to the order are likely to take hold.”
Both lawyers said the lack of precedent on cases like this could complicate matters.
'Playing a very dangerous game'
Two weeks after being fired, Zamora doesn’t regret his decision. He said that, although the directive "wasn’t the largest-scale attack on trans and nonbinary voices" in Texas, it was an opportunity to stand up for those who might feel erased by the policy.
He cited a peer-reviewed study by the Trevor Project, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group, which found that states that passed anti-trans laws on average saw a 72% increase in suicide attempts among trans and nonbinary youth.
"If we continue this rhetoric of trans erasure, then we are playing a very dangerous game with the lives of our children,” he said.
In contrast, Zamora said, he doesn't see how his display of pronouns "presents any kind of danger to public correspondence."
Zamora hopes to secure a new job that better aligns with his values and political beliefs.
He also hopes Americans learn more about what government workers at all levels do each day, from regulating the food they buy to providing the roads and buildings they use.
"All the facets of our daily lives that we take for granted … they just work because some government employee somewhere has been doing their job for 20 or 30 years," he said. "I hope that we will not lose the personal and actual faces of these people as we cull through all these employees."
Do you work at a state or federal agency and live in Texas? Want to share a confidential tip? Email reporter Bayliss Wagner at bwagner@statesman.com or reach out on X @baylisswagner.
