Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law a highly controversial bill Monday that expands parental education rights and bans classroom instruction of gender identity and sexual orientation in kindergarten through third grade.
The governor signed the Parental Rights in Education Act at a signing ceremony and press conference. The bill has been dubbed the "Don't Say Gay" bill by Democratic politicians and liberal activists, who claim the bill will damage the well-being of gay students.
"In Florida, we not only know that parents have a right to be involved, we insist that parents have a right to be involved," DeSantis said at the press conference.
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The new law had been a source of controversy as it began to make its way through the state Legislature in January, drawing condemnation from progressive activists, Hollywood celebrities, and numerous Democratic politicians, including President Joe Biden and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona.
The critics dubbed the legislation the "Don't Say Gay" bill, despite the word "gay" never appearing in the legislation's text and the new law only restricting classroom instruction of sexual orientation and gender identity up to third grade.
In his press conference Monday, DeSantis accused opponents of the bill of "sloganeering" and pushing "fake narratives" and said most of them had not read the text of the bill.
During his remarks, the governor repeatedly invoked the story of January and Jeffrey Littlejohn, a Tallahassee couple that sued their local school district for secretly orchestrating their daughter's transition to a male identity at school.
"They're sloganeering because they don't want to admit that they support a lot of the things that we're providing protections against," DeSantis continued. "They support sexualizing kids in kindergarten, they support injecting woke gender ideology into second-grade classrooms, they support enabling schools to 'transition' students to a 'different gender' without the knowledge of the parent, much less without the parent's consent."
Provisions in the new law bar school officials from "[discouraging] or [prohibiting] parental notification of and involvement in critical decisions affecting a student's mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being."
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The Littlejohn case was one of two lawsuits against school districts in Florida in which a school had refused to provide parents information about their child's gender transition.
The other case, involving the daughter of Fleming Island residents Wendell and Maria Perez, made national headlines due to allegations that the school district did not notify the Perezes about their daughter's transgender identity until the child attempted to commit suicide for a second time.