( The Center Square) – Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has opened the first Office of Parental Rights in the U.S.
OPR litigators will “provide justice to parents and families whose rights have been violated” within the public school system, he said.
“Governments should understand that – when it comes to raising a child – they don’t know best. The parents do, and they deserve an Attorney General’s office working on their behalf,” Uthmeier said. “This first-in-the-nation office is a mechanism for parents and families to seek justice where local governments and school systems seek to ‘treat,’ indoctrinate, or collect data from students without parental involvement. This new initiative is another way we are making Florida the best place to raise a family.”
“Freedom begins at home. It begins with the understanding that parents have the God-given rights to raise their kids the way they deem appropriate. We believe that government should not be in the middle of those parental decisions,” Uthmeier said at a Tuesday news conference.
Despite state laws protecting parental rights, he said there are still public-school districts “where parent’s rights are being infringed.”
While parents can bring private right of action lawsuits against school districts that violate state law, “not everyone can do it” and “the state needs to be here to help,” he said.
OPR litigators will assist parents on types of cases like parents who’ve been denied access to their child’s school records; who didn’t receive consent for biometric or personal data collected; are dealing with unauthorized healthcare, counseling, or mental health services; feel their educational choices are being interfered with; weren’t notified about suspected criminal offenses; feel coerced or encouraged to withhold information; object to questionable or inappropriate instructional or library materials; feel that their parental notification for health services was violated or participation in school governance was restricted; object to having data shared in surveys.
The OPR is also launching a portal where parents can report violations of state law. The office only handles civil matters; criminal cases will be referred to the attorney general’s Office of Statewide Prosecution.
Uthmeier said that what was happening in blue states wouldn’t happen in Florida.
“In California, they passed legislation where young kids can go through these healthcare treatments and they can be indoctrinated and parents have no right whatsoever. Last year, a father in New York lost custody of his nine-year-old son because he questioned the wisdom of a gender transition. In Ohio, we saw something similar, a judge removed a teenage girl, a minor, from her parents when the parents disagreed with what was being pushed upon the child [regarding] so-called ‘gender affirming care.’
“In Florida, these things are not legal. Our Parent’s Bill of Rights protects them. However, you still have school districts, you still have government officials, that want to collect data from kids, that want to subject them to, again treatments, without parental permission,” he said referring to surveys being administered to children about gender ideology in public schools that isn’t shared with parents.
Parents aren’t involved in the surveys or data collection from the surveys, he said. “That’s not going to fly in Florida. We’re going to fight that.”
He cited an example of an ongoing lawsuit in Leon County, where “a school was secretly working without parental involvement to provide ‘gender affirming care,’” which is illegal.
OPR staff will work to enforce parental rights laws enacted under the leadership of Gov. Ron DeSantis. They include Florida’s Parents Bill of Rights, which DeSantis signed in 2021, and Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Act, which he signed in 2022.
Some states like Texas are now seeking to implement similar parental bill of rights following Florida’s model, The Center Square reported.
Florida’s Parent’s Bill of Rights states that it’s “a fundamental right of parents to direct the upbringing, education, and care of their minor children.”
The law prohibits public school districts from withholding information from parents and legal guardians about their children, inadvertently or purposefully, including their health, well-being, and education, while the minor child is in the school district’s custody. The law also requires that parents be notified about the health and well-being of their minor children. It also prohibits any political subdivision, governmental entity or institution from infringing “on the fundamental rights of a parent to direct the upbringing, education, health care, and mental health of his or her minor child.”
