In 1979, change finally appeared more promising. When the bill to allow sex ed passed in April in the House Education Committee, The Times-Picayune lauded its success as surviving the same committee that acted as “the graveyard of sex education for years.” As the bill progressed, opposition groups voiced outrage. In May, a crowd of 400 gathered on the Capitol’s steps. At the rally, a Baptist minister from north Louisiana called the legislators who favored the bill “bald-headed, pot-bellied, cigar-smoking, cocktail-sipping buzzards.” In July 1979, the Louisiana legislature passed Act 480, lifting the ban. At the time, Louisiana was the only state in the U.S. that forbade sex ed in public schools. The new law permitted sex education for Louisiana students with parental permission. In August, the Orleans Parish School Board authorized a Sex Education Committee to determine the district’s curriculum and seek assistance from the State Department of Education. As a final act of protest, a coalition of organizations, including the Concerned Parents, opposed to Act 480 unsuccessfully filed suit to void the law.
1979 Resolution that Lifted the Sex Ed Ban
Prior to 1990, Louisiana law only allowed sex education for grades 8-12. During the June legislative session, a bill passed allowing grades 3-7 only in Orleans Parish to also be eligible to receive sex ed. Dennis Bagneris (D-New Orleans) endorsed the bill for the Orleans Parish School Board, who requested the bill because of the parish’s high teen pregnancy rate.
Louisiana law mandates that if sex ed is offered in public schools, abstinence must be emphasized. In May 2002, the ACLU of Louisiana sued Governor Mike Foster and the Director of the Louisiana Governor’s Program on Abstinence (GPA) Dan Richey for using taxpayer dollars for religious reasons. ACLU of Louisiana v. Foster was the first legal challenge to any program funded by the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, which created millions of dollars dedicated to promoting abstinence in schools, community organizations, and media. The trial court ruled in favor of the ACLU, finding that GPA funded:
- The Diocese of Lafayette to support prayer at abortion clinics
- A theater group performing skits encouraging abstinence, such as an act with a character named “Bible guy”
In November 2002, the ACLU of Louisiana, Foster, and Richey entered a settlement, prohibiting the GPA from funding organizations or individuals for religious purposes. In 2003, the GPA expanded programming and its reach. During its first youth conference in 2002, the GPA conference attracted 175 students across Louisiana. The next year, the GPA conference became a state-wide tour, reaching 10,000 youth, including a special appearance from 2003 Miss America Erika Harold. In 2005, the ACLU of Louisiana argued that the GPA had not agreed to the settlement’s terms by using religious language on the GPA’s AbstinenceEdu.com website, which was contracted with the Louisiana Family Forum.
In 2014, Governor Bobby Jindal signed Act 617, prohibiting employees and representatives of organizations that provide abortions from teaching or distributing any materials on any health topic, “including but not limited to human sexuality or family planning,” in any public school. This act banned Planned Parenthood and other reproductive health organizations from schools.
No law has passed requiring sex ed in schools across Louisiana. Act 480 was last amended in 1993. Since then, legislation has increasingly targeted LGBTQ+ students, biasing who is represented in sex ed curriculum. In 2024, the state legislature passed Act 681, commonly referred to as “Louisiana’s Don’t Say Gay Bill.” The act bans public schools discussing sexual orientation or gender identity. Many state representatives, including Patricia Haynes Smith (D), have sponsored bills expanding sex ed, but their proposals have failed. The following section compares two sexual education curricula from New Orleans public schools in the 1980s.