Messaging to Protect Immigrant and LGBTQ Student Access to/Learning in Schools in an Attack Era

• In Event: Refusing Limitation, Protecting Public Education: Researchers and Practitioners Responding Together to K12 DEI Attacks

Abstract

This presentation discusses approaches to messaging inclusion of immigrant and LGBTQ+ students in K12 education in a climate of attack. These two groups have become the focus of wide-ranging attacks, but in different ways. For immigrant populations, a large number of executive orders; the national budget following the reconciliation process that was passed in 2025; greatly increasing the rate of ICE arrests and detention across the country; and attempts to revoke both birthright citizenship and the Plyler vs Doe provisions that assure children’s access to public education regardless of citizenship status, have all occurred to threaten the safety, well-being and existence of non-citizen immigrants in the United States. For LGBTQ populations, the definition of sex as male and female only; attacks on gender-affirming health care and policies; and inclusion of sexuality and gender as central aspects of DEI that are discouraged in all forms of education have been put forth by the federal administration in ways that echo states such as Florida, which have implemented such policies since 2021 (blinded, 2024).

Messaging approaches draw on three recent syntheses and partnerships with legal organizations to counter current policies with evidence:

1) an interdisciplinary social science amicus brief on birthright citizenship revocation of which [presenter, blinded] was a principal author, which was brought in one of the 3 cases that have as of this writing successfully countered the Supreme Court decision in support of ending birthright citizenship;
2) work to protect Plyler vs Doe in a partnership between the National Immigration Law Coalition and [presenter, blinded];
3) an expert declaration by [presenter, blinded] summarizing a decade of research on gender-sexuality alliances (GSAs), to demonstrate the benefits of GSAs and the harm that closure of these affinity groups in the current climate may have on LGBTQ+ youth.

Several lessons regarding messaging emerge from these initiatives. First, demonstrating harm of current policies benefits not just from showing harm to targeted minoritized groups, but also harm to all students and the society as a whole. This was key to the central messages of the birthright citizenship brief. Second, reframing groups not as victims that are solely represented as experiencing harm but as sources of societal strength and growth is essential to place benefits of inclusion alongside harm of exclusion. This is relevant for framing the contributions of GSAs and LGBTQ+ youth to advocacy in and across schools, which research on GSAs shows. Third, messaging must be tailored to the local context and even to individuals, when the policy processes are occurring at that level. This is the case with Plyler vs Doe, where challenges are being brought first at the state level before they rise in the court system to the federal level. Examples will be provided of tailoring of messages and messengers to e.g. particular members of state legislatures. We will conclude with what education researchers can do in partnership with advocates, organizers and litigators in the current climate to develop effective research-based messages.

The next project presented also developed such messaging.

Authors

• Hirokazu Yoshikawa, New York University

• Sophia Rodriguez, New York University