Frank Zamora was fired from a job with a state agency for refusing to remove pronouns from his email signature. Credit: Facebook / Frank Zamora

San Antonio resident Frank Zamora was fired for not complying with an order a Texas state agency gave employees to remove gender pronouns from their work email signatures, the Austin-American Statesman reports.

Zamora received an ultimatum on Feb. 3 from the Texas Real Estate Commission, the agency that employed him, to scrub the pronouns from his signature, according to the newspaper.

Commission officials were responding to a vague Jan. 30 order from Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who directed state agencies to “comply with the law and the biological reality that there are only two sexes — male and female.”

A Feb. 3 email from the director of the Texas Real Estate Commission ordered employees to remove pronouns from emails to comply with Abbott’s directive, the Statesman reports.

After weighing the pros and cons regarding a job he loved, Zamora decided not to comply — and was summarily fired for it, according to the paper.

Abbott tweeted out the Statesman story about Zamora’s termination. “A Texas state employee refused to remove pronouns from email signature,” the governor wrote. “He was fired before noon.”

Billionaire Trump donor Elon Musk, who also owns X — the social media platform formerly known as Twitter —  retweeted Abbott’s message with two fire emojis, suggested he approved of Zamora being sacked.

Abbott’s original order makes no mention of pronouns, leaving room for interpretation for state agencies when it comes to implementation. Zamora, who was born male and identifies as male, doesn’t appear to have directly defied Abbott’s assertion that “there are only two sexes — male and female.”

Though Zamora isn’t transgender, he recently added pronouns to his email signature in solidarity with nonbinary, intersex and trans Texans, the Statesman reports.

Zamora, who’s a member of the LGBTQ community, refused to back down on the principle of the matter, but also refused to resign, according to the newspaper. Thus, he was terminated.

Zamora told the Statesman he sees what happened to him as “part of a broader effort to make LGBTQ+ people feel unwelcome in the state of Texas.”

Zamora’s firing comes as a wave of anti-trans bills make their way through the Texas Legislature this session. Those include House Bill 239, which would restrict use of public bathrooms by trans people. Additionally, the Texas A&M University system has banned drag shows on campus in response to pressure by state officials.  

“There have been multiple occasions when I stop and I ask myself, ‘Is this really happening?’” Zamora told the Statesman. “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.”

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This article appears in Mar 5-18, 2025.

Stephanie Koithan is the Digital Content Editor of the San Antonio Current. In her role, she writes about politics, music, art, culture and food. Send her a tip at skoithan@sacurrent.com.