No, Texas didn’t criminalize pride flags in classrooms

Is it illegal to have pride flags in Texas classrooms? Contrary to social media users’ claims, no law has banned pride flags in the Lone Star State.

“Texas declares bringing a pride flag to the classroom a crime,” a Dec. 10 Threads post with a picture of a person in front of a pride flag and a photo of a crowd at what appears to be a pride rally said.

But the headline originated as satire. The same headline with one of the photographs in the Threads post was shared Sept. 8 with a satire label on Esspots, a satire and parody news website. A disclaimer on Esspots says, “We would like to emphasize that nothing on this website is real.”

A Google search for news reports about Texas criminalizing pride flags found nothing credible and only resulted in fact-checks. 

Republican Texas state Sen. Bob Hall introduced a bill for the 2025 legislative session that would prohibit public schools from teaching about sexual orientation or gender identity, but it said nothing about schools banning the pride flag. Hall introduced a similar bill in 2023 that was not enacted.

We rate the claim that “Texas declares bringing a pride flag to the classroom” a crime False.