Attorney General Todd Rokita said he has little confidence in the Indiana Department of Education’s ability to enforce the state’s ban on teaching human sexuality to public schoolchildren from preschool through third grade.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana withdrew its lawsuit seeking to overturn the ban on behalf of an Indianapolis Public Schools teacher — who argued the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law violated her right to free expression — after a federal appeals court denied the ACLU’s request to block enforcement of the law in April.
Rokita called it a “major victory for parents’ rights.”
The law prohibits public schoolteachers, employees and third-party vendors from providing instruction on human sexuality to children from preschool through third grade — terms the ACLU argued were overly broad.
“Multiple courts ruled in our favor, so they finally threw in the towel, and rightfully so,” Rokita said in social media post Monday, calling on lawmakers to “get rid of this kind of instruction for every grade because woke nonsense doesn’t belong in our schools.”
A spokesperson for the ACLU of Indiana said it voluntarily dismissed the lawsuit following the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals decision, but the civil liberties law firm’s concerns remain.
“Vague censorship laws chill speech and leave educators questioning how to serve their students without risking discipline,” McKenzie Conrad said. “We will continue to oppose laws that invite classroom censorship and make it harder for educators to support all students.”
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita speaks with reporters on Thursday. (Photo by Mackenzi Klemann/Indiana Capital Chronicle.) Rokita told reporters Thursday he looks forward to continuing to defend the law against any future challenges in court, but said enforcement against teachers who violate it lies with the Department of Education, which can revoke a teacher’s license.
The attorney general questioned the department’s ability or willingness to enforce the ban if lawmakers don’t give it extra “teeth,” citing the 14 teachers whose licenses he said have been revoked this year due to criminal convictions.
“That’s the standard we’re on over here at the Department of Education — that you lose your licenses after you’re convicted of a crime,” Rokita said. “So I don’t have much confidence in this statute that the Department of Education is going to enforce this human sexuality teaching prohibition here in the state of Indiana, but I await to be pleasantly surprised. Otherwise, we’ve got to put better enforcement teeth in this.”
The Department of Education did not immediately respond to a request for comment or clarification of its standard for revoking a teacher’s license.
The authority to suspend or revoke a license ultimately lies with the Indiana Office of Administrative Law Proceedings following an investigation by the Department of Education.
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