Florida’s First-in-the-Nation Office of Parental Rights
On Tuesday, April 29, 2025, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier launched a national first: the Office of Parental Rights. In a press release, he says the “initiative is established to provide justice to parents and families whose rights have been violated.”
He celebrated the launch with a press conference at a Jacksonville school, where our own Florida State Coordinator and PRF Board Member Patti Sullivan joined him at the platform. Moms for Liberty founder Tiffany Justice, Southeastern Legal Foundation executive director Kimberly Hermann, and parent activist January Littlejohn, plaintiff in the 11th Circuit lawsuit Littlejohn v. Schoolboard of Leon County, were also part of the presentation.
(The Parental Rights Foundation filed an amicus brief supporting fundamental parental rights in the Littlejohn case.)
AG Uthmeier explained in the press conference his belief that “freedom begins at home; it begins with the understanding that parents have God-given rights to raise their kids the way they deem appropriate…. Government should not be in the middle of those parental decisions.”
He also contrasted Florida’s efforts to California’s, where recently passed laws strip parents of rights to make medical and healthcare decisions for their children if they disagree with a government-enforced ideology.
The office includes “a team of litigators,” Uthmeier announced, adding, “They’re moms; they’ve got their own kids; they are fired up and ready to get to work” defending families from government overreach.
“No parent should have to fight to know what’s happening in their schools,” Kim Hermann declared. Her Southeastern Legal Foundation has been working on a number of cases where schools are asking survey questions of students without parental consent, even denying parents a copy of the questions after the fact—all of which violates the federal Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA).
“I’m proud to share a historic moment for Florida families,” Moms for Liberty’s Tiffany Justice added in her remarks, declaring the initiative a “model of courage” and a “call to action for every other governor and attorney general across the United States.”
“Stand with moms and dads,” she added, “[who are] fighting to protect their kids from policies that erode our authority.”
Patti Sullivan, in sharing some of the history that brought us to this moment, said, “The passage of the Parents’ Bill of Rights [in 2021] not only was a great thing, but also revealed the deeper issues…. And we are not done yet.” She elicited spontaneous applause when she added, “We shouldn’t have to expand our parental rights. This is a restoration of what is already a God-given right.”
This is tremendous news. And it is my hope that, just as Florida’s passage of their Parents’ Bill of Rights in 2021 has led other states to take up similar legislation, so too we will see other states follow this example and set up offices of parental rights in their own attorney generals’ offices.
I also sincerely hope we will see, in Florida and then elsewhere, these offices take up parental concerns not only about schools and school boards, but also about family courts and child welfare agencies that are breaking up families without cause.
I am so grateful for Patti Sullivan and all her hard work in Florida, dating back more than a dozen years. And I am grateful to the Florida Administration for taking this historic step to “have parents’ backs” when local agencies stand against them and remove their natural, fundamental rights.
Thank you for standing with us as we protect children by empowering parents across the nation through good policy, good legislation, and now good executive action. As we continue to lift our voices together, may we keep finding administrations and lawmakers who listen, like the ones we’ve found in Florida.