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On Friday, the GOP-led House passed a Parents Bill of Rights despite Democrat opposition to it. The bill passed narrowly — 213 to 208 — with a handful of Republicans voting against it and no Democrats voting in favor of it. The Bill is designed to promote transparency by requiring school districts to publicly post curricula, including lists of books and other reading material that will be made available to students.
Friday morning, ahead of the vote, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) expressed his support for the legislation on Twitter.
The House is about to vote on H.R. 5, the Parents Bill of Rights.
It doesn’t matter the color of your skin, the zip code you live in, or the wealth you have. As a parent, you should have a right to know what’s going on inside your child’s classroom. https://t.co/zKZJhJlz9g
— Kevin McCarthy (@SpeakerMcCarthy) March 24, 2023
The House is about to vote on H.R. 5, the Parents Bill of Rights. It doesn’t matter the color of your skin, the zip code you live in, or the wealth you have. As a parent, you should have a right to know what’s going on inside your child’s classroom.
Democrats opposed to the bill maintain that the true aim of the legislation is “fascist” and “extreme” and will lead to book-banning and the outing of LGBTQ+ students. But Republicans pushed for the bill in response to a groundswell of support from the Republican base.
The GOP bill is a response to growing anger across the country about access to information on everything from school curricula to safety and mask policies to the prevalence of gender ideology and critical race theory in the classroom. Parents’ anger over these issues at school board meetings led to an effort by the Biden administration’s Justice Department to examine the “disturbing trend” of violent threats against school officials.
House Republicans reacted by approving the Parents Bill of Rights Act, which would require school districts to give parents access to curriculum and reading lists and would require schools to inform parents if school staff begin encouraging or promoting their child’s gender transition.
Passage of the bill comes at a time when many state legislatures are also debating and enacting measures designed to add transparency and support parents who have been stunned and angered at the push from many in education to indoctrinate students with progressive/Marxist ideals, all while shutting parents out of the process.
While the Democrats railed against the measure, attributing the push for it to “extreme MAGA Republicans,” who, according to Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), “don’t want the children of America to learn about the Holocaust,” and “want to ban books, they want to bully the LGBTQ+ community, they want to bring guns into classrooms, kindergarten and above,” Republicans waved off those arguments.
“Nowhere in this bill is it banning any books,” asserted Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., who said the goal of the language is to make sure parents are aware of sexually explicit books in school libraries.
Norman and others also argued that the books under attack in some states and communities are those that include explicit sexual content that they say is not appropriate for certain ages and is not a core educational requirement. Norman cited books that talk about kids who are “sexually active from the time I was 6,” or that include “explicit images of oral sex.”
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“Parents, is this something you want your children to read?” Norman asked. “Parents, is this something that encourages academics and allows that child to compete in the 21st century?”
Matt Gaetz (R-FL) was joined by four other Republicans who voted against the measure. Gaetz took to Twitter Friday morning to lay out his rationale for opposing the legislation.
From Wokeness to funding to bathrooms to Critical Race Theory, the federal government SHOULD NOT be involved in education.
I don’t want to strengthen the federal Department of Education. I want to abolish it.
I don’t want Congress more involved in decisions that are best made…
— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) March 24, 2023
From Wokeness to funding to bathrooms to Critical Race Theory, the federal government SHOULD NOT be involved in education.
I don’t want to strengthen the federal Department of Education. I want to abolish it.
I don’t want Congress more involved in decisions that are best made in local school districts. I want the Congress less involved.
Therefore, I voted against today’s Republican bill to establish a federal “Parents Bill of Rights.”
The other four Republicans who voted against the bill were Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Ken Buck (R-CO), Matt Rosendale (R-MT), and Mike Lawler (R-NY).
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