Ohio Gov. DeWine signed HB8, barring K-3 gender-identity instruction and requiring schools to report students' well-being changes to parents

On January 8, 2025, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed House Bill 8, known as the "Parents' Bill of Rights," into law. The Ohio General Assembly had passed the bill on December 18, 2024, the final day of the lame-duck session, over calls from LGBTQ advocates for a veto. State Reps. D.J. Swearingen (R-Huron) and Sara Carruthers (R-Hamilton) were the House primary sponsors. Supporters cast the measure as protecting parental authority over education and health decisions, while opponents likened it to Florida's "Don't Say Gay" law.

As enacted, HB8 prohibits public schools from providing kindergarten-through-third-grade classroom instruction containing "sexuality content," which the law defines to include "gender ideology." For other grades, schools must give parents advance notice of instructional material containing sexuality content and allow students to opt out into alternative instruction. The law separately requires school personnel — including counselors, social workers, and psychologists — to notify a parent of any change in a student's counseling, monitoring, or services related to the student's mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being, and it bars personnel from encouraging a student to withhold such information from a parent. The bill's text does not define "gender ideology."

Updates

2025-04-09 — HB8 took effect statewide [1]

House Bill 8 took effect on April 9, 2025, roughly 90 days after Gov. DeWine signed it. As of this archiving, no court challenge to HB8 itself had been identified.