Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis quotes Martin Luther King Jr. while proposing a bill that allows parents to sue schools that teach critical race theory

• A proposed bill in Florida would allow parents to sue schools over critical race theory.
• In announcing the bill, Gov. Ron DeSantis invoked MLK’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
• Florida has already banned the theory, which has not been taught in Florida classrooms.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced proposed legislation on Wednesday that would pave the way for parents to sue schools that teach critical race theory.

The Stop the Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees Act, or the Stop WOKE Act, “will be the strongest legislation of its kind in the nation and will take on both corporate wokeness and Critical Race Theory,” according to a news release from DeSantis’s office.

“In Florida, we are taking a stand against the state-sanctioned racism that is critical race theory,” DeSantis said in a statement. “We won’t allow Florida tax dollars to be spent teaching kids to hate our country or to hate each other.”

The bill would provide employees, parents, and students a “private right of action” in schools teaching critical race theory and in workplaces that have a “hostile work environment due to critical race theory training.” Parents who win lawsuits would also be entitled to collect attorneys’ fees.

While announcing the proposed bill, DeSantis invoked civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

“You think about what MLK stood for. He said he didn’t want people judged on the color of their skin, but on the content of their character,” DeSantis said Wednesday. “You listen to some of these people nowadays, they don’t talk about that.”

—The Recount (@therecount) December 15, 2021

Critical race theory has become a popular target for Republican politicians, who often mischaracterize it, incorrectly claiming it depicts all Black people as victims, attempts to make white people feel guilty, and teaches students to hate America.

The decades-old theory is an academic concept and legal framework that examines America’s history of racism and how it impacts the US today.

“Critical race theory is a practice. It’s an approach to grappling with a history of White supremacy that rejects the belief that what’s in the past is in the past, and that the laws and systems that grow from that past are detached from it,” Kimberlé Crenshaw, a founding critical race theorist and law professor at UCLA and Columbia University, told CNN.

Republicans have focused on the idea of critical race theory being taught to kids in school, despite little evidence of it actually being taught. In announcing the Stop WOKE Act, DeSantis’s office cited some “national examples of Critical Race Theory” in schools, none of which occurred in Florida.

The proposed bill comes after the Florida Board of Education banned the teaching of critical race theory in state classrooms in June.

A Democratic Florida state lawmaker criticized the Stop WOKE Act in a tweet on Wednesday.

“FFS. Stop creating fake problems @GovRonDeSantis to divide us & start focusing on crises in front of us,” state Rep. Anna Eskamani said.

Teachers in states where anti-critical race theory legislation has been enacted or proposed told Insider’s Ashley Collman the theory is not commonly taught in schools and is too high-level a concept for K-12 classrooms. Some also said they worry the bills could have a “chilling” effect on education.

Have a news tip? Contact this reporter at kvlamis@insider.com.