The Florida Board of Education unanimously voted on Thursday to adopt a rule that would ban the teaching of critical race theory in state classrooms.

The new rule comes with approval from Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has been a vocal critic of the framework and who spoke to the board at the start of Thursday’s meeting, telling them that he doesn’t want to stop children from being taught about slavery or civil rights, but that he hopes to prevent them from learning a “false history” that would “denigrate the Founding Fathers,” the Orlando Sentinel reported.

The decision makes Florida one of the largest school systems to conform to conservative attempts to ban critical race theory, which has become a flashpoint for GOP outrage over the racial history being taught in public schools.

Many critics of the framework view the term as a sweeping set of educational programs they believe teaches American history through a “toxic,” anti-racism lens.

“I think it’s going to cause a lot of divisions,” DeSantis said on Thursday. “I think it’ll cause people to think of themselves more as a member of a particular race based on skin color, rather than based on the content of their character and based on their hard work and what they’re trying to accomplish in life.”

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Florida’s new rule would also ban any suppression or distorting of historical events such as the Holocaust, slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction, the civil-rights movement, and the contributions of women, African Americans, and Hispanic people to the country.

The rule also specifically targets The New York Times’ 1619 Project – another initiative that sparked conservative condemnation – banning the use of its premises or conclusions as teaching material.

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