The White Home is prodding Florida college students and oldsters to file federal antidiscrimination lawsuits over the state’s new regulation that bars faculties from educating sexual orientation and sexual identification earlier than fourth grade.
Home press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stated the regulation, which took impact Friday, was “shameful.”
“As we speak, a few of Florida’s most susceptible college students and households are extra fearful and fewer free. Because the state’s shameful “Don’t Say Homosexual” regulation takes impact, state officers who declare to champion liberty are limiting the liberty of their fellow People merely to be themselves,” she stated in a press release.
Critics dubbed the regulation “Don’t Say Homosexual,” claiming it was an LGBTQ gag order and would encourage bullying. The White Home echoed these considerations.
Ms. Jean-Pierre, who’s the primary Black and brazenly homosexual White Home press secretary, inspired college students and oldsters who assume they’re victimized by the regulation to file a federal lawsuit.
“The Division of Schooling will likely be monitoring this regulation, and any scholar or guardian who believes they’re experiencing discrimination is inspired to file a grievance with the Division’s Workplace for Civil Rights,” she stated. “Our Administration will proceed to combat for dignity and alternative for each scholar and household — in Florida and across the nation.”
She stated the White Home had already obtained experiences of “Protected House” stickers faraway from school rooms, lecturers instructed to not put on rainbow symbols and LGBTQ lecturers compelled to take away household pictures from their school rooms desks.
“This isn’t a difficulty of ‘mother and father’ rights,” Ms. Jean-Pierre stated. “That is discrimination, plain and easy. It’s a part of a disturbing and harmful nationwide pattern of right-wing politicians cynically concentrating on LGBTQI+ college students, educators, and people to attain political factors. It encourages bullying and threatens college students’ psychological well being, bodily security, and well-being.”
The regulation prohibits lecturers from discussing sexual orientation and gender identification points in kindergarten by means of third grade or in a way that’s not age-appropriate for college students. A provision within the regulation additionally requires faculty staffers to alert mother and father about “important choices affecting a scholar’s psychological emotional or bodily well being.”
Supporters of the laws, together with Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, say the measure solely applies to younger kids and provides mother and father extra management over their kids’s training. Additionally they contend that it doesn’t prohibit lecturers from speaking about their LGBTQ households or ban classroom discussions about LGBTQ historical past.
