Attorney General Pam Bondi this week directed the Justice Department to defend parental rights in schools and monitor state and local officials for possible violations of constitutional protections.
In a memorandum dated Monday and posted to social media platform X, the attorney general said Wednesday that she has instructed the Civil Rights Division and all U.S. attorneys to uphold parents’ First Amendment rights and ensure they are not punished for objecting to school policies or curriculum.
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Parents of school-aged children should NEVER be treated like criminals for speaking at school board meetings.
— Attorney General Pamela Bondi (@AGPamBondi) September 10, 2025
No more. @TheJusticeDept is restoring law & order and returning power to the PEOPLE we serve.
I am directing @FBI, our @CivilRights division, and all our U.S.… pic.twitter.com/KTRtEQrYFY
“Parents of school-aged children should NEVER be treated like criminals for speaking at school board meetings,” Bondi wrote. “No more. @TheJusticeDept is restoring law & order and returning power to the PEOPLE we serve.”
Bondi condemned what she called a “disturbing trend” of public schools promoting “radical gender and racial ideology” while retaliating against parents who dissent. She wrote in her memo that the DOJ would scrutinize any efforts to burden parents’ religious or speech rights and would pursue “appropriate enforcement action” against government actors who violate federal law.
The directive follows a recent Supreme Court ruling in Mahmoud v. Taylor, which held that public school districts must provide religious exemptions to families who object to certain instruction, including LGBT-themed content. Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, said the government “cannot condition the benefit of free public education on parents’ acceptance of such instruction.”
The memo reflects a growing number of cases in which parental authority has seen pushback from local officials across the country. One high-profile 2021 case that garnered national attention during the Biden administration involved Scott Smith, a Loudoun County, Virginia, father convicted of disorderly conduct after protesting the local school board’s handling of his daughter’s bathroom sexual assault.
Smith was pardoned in September 2023 by Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) after a special grand jury found that the school system’s response was highly inadequate, which resulted in the Loudoun County School Board firing Superintendent Scott Ziegler, who was later indicted on three misdemeanor charges for misconduct.
Earlier this year, a separate incident at Loudoun County Public Schools was referred to the Education and Justice departments for further investigation after state Attorney General Jason Miyares found a “disturbing misuse of authority” by the district that investigated three boys over claims that they harassed a biological female in their locker room.
“Students appear to have been targeted not for misconduct, but for expressing their discomfort for being forced to share a locker room with a member of the opposite sex,” Miyares said in a June press release. “Title IX was never meant to be used as a weapon against free speech or religious convictions. Every student in Virginia deserves the right to speak openly, think freely, and live according to their conscience without fear of retaliation.”
Among those applauding Bondi’s move is Ian Prior, a Loudoun County parent and senior counselor at America First Legal, who played a central role in organizing parents after the Smith case and has since become a national advocate.
“For far too long, rogue school boards, school officials, and outside allies have been working hand-in-glove to implement radical and illegal policies that usurp the constitutional right of parents to guide the education, health, and well-being of their children,” Prior told the Washington Examiner.
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Matt Sharp, the director and senior counsel of the Alliance Defending Freedom’s Center for Public Policy, called the move by Bondi a “sharp contrast” to four years of leadership at the DOJ by her predecessor, Merrick Garland. The ADF has been at the forefront of several parental rights lawsuits, including content opt-out fights, compelled speech cases, and disputes involving schools concealing a child’s gender transition or social transition from their parents.
The ADF “is helping several parents and families across the country who are seeing schools drive a wedge between them and their children by pushing radical gender ideology on vulnerable kids,” Sharp added, saying his organization is “grateful” for Bondi’s defense of parental oversight.