Republican Sens. Jim Banks of Indiana and Tom Cotton of Arkansas reintroduced legislation Wednesday to stop K-12 schools from withholding information from parents if their child expresses discomfort with his or her biological sex.
The bill, called the Empower Parents to Protect Their Kids Act, would prevent K-12 schools from hiding or facilitating children adopting a gender identity that is incongruent with the child’s biological sex, according to bill text first obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The legislation would also empower parents to sue school districts that hide information about their child’s gender transition or gender identity.
“Parents should never be kept in the dark about their own kids,” Banks told the DCNF in a statement. “This bill makes sure schools can’t push radical gender ideology behind parents’ backs and puts families back in charge where they belong.”
Banks first introduced the legislation in the House of Representatives in May 2023, but it did not receive a vote.
“Schools should never be allowed to impose radical, harmful ideologies on children – especially without their parents’ consent,” Cotton said in a statement provided to the DCNF. “Our bill protects students and ensures parents are in control of their children’s education. Schools should remain institutions of education, not a place for radical liberal propaganda.”
Republican Illinois Rep. Mary Miller, who is introducing a House version of the bill and was a co-sponsor of the legislation in 2023, told the DCNF in a statement that “parents have the God-given right and duty to raise their children without being deceived by extremists in public education.”
“We must end the radical gender ideologies being pushed on our children and give parents the power to fight back,” Miller added.
President Donald Trump has been cracking down on gender ideology in federal agencies and schools across the nation. In January, Trump unveiled an executive order, “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” to prevent K-12 schools from using federal funds to support “illegal and discriminatory treatment and indoctrination” such as promoting “gender ideology” and “discriminatory equity ideology.”
“Imprinting anti-American, subversive, harmful, and false ideologies on our nation’s children not only violates longstanding anti-discrimination civil rights law in many cases, but usurps basic parental authority,” according to the order. “For example, steering students toward surgical and chemical mutilation without parental consent or involvement or allowing males access to private spaces designated for females may contravene federal laws that protect parental rights, including the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA), and sex-based equality and opportunity, including Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (Title IX).”
Between 2019 and 2023, 13,994 minors underwent sex change treatments and 5,747 minors had sex change surgeries in the U.S., according to Do No Harm’s Stop The Harm Database. Additionally, an Aug. 20 report from the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute found that 724,000 kids between the ages of 13 to 17 in the U.S. and 2.1 million adults say they are transgender.
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