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(PONTIAC, Mich.) — James Crumbley, the father of Michigan school shooter Ethan Crumbley, will not testify in his manslaughter trial as the defense rested after just one witness Wednesday.

After the jury was removed from the courtroom, James Crumbley was asked questions by his attorney under oath, in which he revealed it was his choice to remain silent, and not testify before the jury.

The court is currently taking a recess and closing arguments are set to begin at 12:30 p.m. ET on Wednesday.

James Crumbley is facing four counts of involuntary manslaughter in connection with a 2021 school shooting carried out by his son. Four of the shooter’s classmates were killed in the shooting and seven others were injured.

James Crumbley’s wife, Jennifer Crumbley, was found guilty of the same four charges in February. During her trial, she chose to take the stand in her own defense, getting grilled by prosecutors over how she spent her time in the days and months leading up to the shooting, including extramarital affairs.

The Crumbleys are a rare case of parents facing criminal charges in connection with a shooting carried out by their son.

Ethan Crumbley was sentenced to life in prison without parole after he pleaded guilty to 24 counts including first-degree premeditated murder and terrorism causing death.

Before the prosecution rested, Brett Brandon, one of the officers in charge of the James Crumbley case, took the stand on Wednesday, testifying about what the Crumbleys were doing during a manhunt for them and how they had groceries delivered to them.

After the parents were charged, they failed to turn themselves in by the deadline set by a judge, and a manhunt ensued until they were found hiding at a Detroit business.

After Brandon concluded his testimony, the prosecution rested and the defense called James Crumbley’s sister, Karen Crumbley, to testify. She was the only defense witness to be called to the stand.

Karen Crumbley testified to having seen both James and the shooter in April and June 2021 and not having seen or heard anything concerning about her nephew at that time. She also testified that she did not have any conversations with James Crumbley in which he would express concern over his son during that time.

In cross-examination, prosecutor Marc Keast used cellphone records to point out that Karen was not particularly close with her brother and did not talk to him that often via the phone or social media, having only spoken on the phone three times and exchanged 22 messages in all of 2021. She also answered questions about her brother buying a gun for his son.

“If you are getting gun specifically for your child to use at his leisure, that would be wrong. But with adult supervision, I don’t see any problem with it,” Karen Crumbley said.

During cross-examination, Karen Crumbley testified that if she had seen drawings of a gun from the shooter or if he wrote her “help me” she would have found that concerning, as a mother, and she would have tried to help.

Karen Crumbley also revealed on the stand that when family went to visit James, Jennifer and Ethan Crumbley at their Michigan home in June 2021, James Crumbley had shown the whole family his gun and where he kept it in his room. Prosecutors have sought to argue that James Crumbley could have prevented the shooting by securing the gun and preventing his son from having access.

ABC News’ Whitney Lloyd contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — The National Transportation Safety Board will hold a two-day investigative hearing on the Alaska Air door plug incident, the agency announced Tuesday.

The hearing will take place on Aug. 6 and 7, with the location and other details to be announced at a later date, the NTSB said.

The door plug of Alaska Airlines flight 1282 fell off a few minutes after take off from Portland International Airport on Jan. 5. Passengers captured footage showing a hole where the door plug came loose on the Boeing 737 Max 9 plane. The plane safely made an emergency landing and no one was seriously injured.

The investigating hearing will “assist in obtaining information necessary to determine the facts, circumstances, and probable cause of the transportation accident or incident under investigation and to make recommendations to improve transportation safety,” the NTSB said in a statement.

The agency held similar hearings last year on the toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio..

The Federal Aviation Administration grounded approximately 171 Max 9s worldwide following the incident earlier this year. Alaska Airlines resumed flying the Boeing 737 Max 9 following fleet inspections on Jan. 26.

An NTSB preliminary report released last month found that four bolts designed to prevent the door plug from falling off the Boeing 737 Max 9 plane were missing before the plug blew off the flight.

The FAA conducted an audit of Boeing’s production and manufacturing in the wake of the door plug blow-out that has now concluded, the agency said Tuesday. The FAA said in a statement it identified “non-compliance issues in Boeing’s manufacturing process control, parts handling and storage, and product control” through its audit.

No additional details are being released at this time amid an ongoing investigation, the FAA said.

In response to the audit, Boeing said it continues to “implement immediate changes and develop a comprehensive action plan to strengthen safety and quality, and build the confidence of our customers and their passengers.”

“We are squarely focused on taking significant, demonstrated action with transparency at every turn,” the company said in a statement.

In a notice to employees sent Tuesday, Boeing Commercial Airplanes President and CEO Stan Deal said the “vast majority of our audit non-compliances involved not following our approved processes and procedures.”

The Justice Department is also investigating the Alaska Airlines incident, three sources familiar with the situation told ABC News last month.

The probe will also examine specifically whether Boeing violated its 2021 deferred prosecution agreement when the company was investigated by the Justice Department over two 737 Max crashes. The deferred prosecution agreement forced Boeing to cooperate with federal government probes and fined the company $2.5 billion after Lion Air Flight 610 in 2018, and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 in 2019, both 737 Max planes, crashed.

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(NEW YORK) — Alabama mother Mahogany Jackson was found shot in the back of the head on Feb. 26 by the side of a road in a remote area in Birmingham, Alabama, hours after she texted her mother saying that she had been kidnapped and asking for help, according to the Birmingham Police Department (BPD).

Now six of the eight suspects charged in connection to the kidnapping, sexual assault and murder of the 20-year-old Jackson are set to appear in court Wednesday morning for a preliminary hearing.

“The facts of this case are deplorable and sickening. Saddest of all, they were made public by the suspects’ decision to videotape portions of this horrific act,” said BPD Chief Scott Thurmond during a press conference on Feb. 28, announcing the arrest of several suspects. “We have to shield Mahogany’s family and friends by withholding specific facts surrounding the investigation. However, we have determined that Mahogany was a victim of sexual assault with murder and kidnapped.”

“This is undoubtedly one of the most heinous acts I’ve seen in my career. It’s absolutely disgusting,” Thurmond added.

The suspects

Police announced on Feb. 28 that seven suspects were arrested and charged in connection to the kidnapping, rape, assault and murder of Jackson, a native of Jasper, Alabama, while an eighth suspect was arrested on March 1.

Brandon Pope, 24, Francis Harris, 25, and Jeremiah McDowell, 18, were each charged with capital murder during a first-degree kidnapping and capital murder during first-degree sodomy and are being held without bond. According to ABC affiliate in Birmingham, WBMA-TV, investigators said during a bond hearing on March 4 that Harris is believed to have fired the fatal shot.

During that bond hearing the five additional suspects were denied bond, WBMA reported.

Giovannie Clapp, 23, and Blair Green, 25, and Si’Niya McCall, 23, were charged with felony murder, first-degree kidnapping and first-degree sodomy, while Teja Lewis, 26, was charged with felony murder.

Lewis and Clapp also were charged with second-degree assault, while the eighth suspect, Ariana Lashay Robinson, 23, was charged with felony murder – kidnapping, according to police.

ABC News has reached out to the attorneys representing each of the suspects. Attorneys representing Clapp and Lewis declined to comment, but attorneys representing the six other suspects did not immediately respond to ABC News’ requests.

Thurmond said that the suspects in this case “were not strangers” and were all acquainted with each other. He also said that Jackson was acquainted with the suspects.

Thurmond thanked the public for sharing information that helped lead to the arrests in this case.

“You answered the call,” he said. “This case highlights the strength and effectiveness of the partnership between the Birmingham Police Department in our community.”

A call for help

BPD spokesman Officer Truman Fitzgerald told ABC News in a phone interview on Monday that police began the investigation into this incident as a missing person’s case after they were notified before 11 a.m. local time on Sunday Feb. 25 about a text message that Jackson sent to her mother.

In the message, Jackson told her mother that she was being held hostage and shared the name of an individual who lives in the apartment where she was allegedly being held, as well as an address and asked her mother not to call her back, but urged her to reach out to the police, Fitzgerald said, adding that it was the last time anyone heard from Jackson.

“[Police] went to that apartment right away and began searching immediately. They searched the apartment where she was supposedly, they searched the complex. They spoke to witnesses,” Fitzgerald said, “but by then [Jackson] was not [there].”

According to Fitzgerald, BPD detectives learned during the investigation that the alleged kidnappers found out that Jackson used her phone after she texted her mother and threatened her to reveal her passcode so they could unlock her phone. Jackson could have presumably been moved to a different location before police arrived on the scene, Fitzgerald said.

“One of [the suspects] told her if she gave her password, they would allow her to live,” Fitzgerald said.

According to police, a witness who is not involved in the incident found Jackson’s body at around 2:19 a.m. on the side of the road at 17th Street SW and Laurel Avenue.

Fitzgerald said that Jackson’s body was found “in a kind of isolated area near a residential neighborhood” about two and half miles away from the apartment that Jackson had indicated she was being held at in the text message to her mother.

Jackson’s family and community members held a candlelit vigil on Feb. 29 in honor of her memory at the Serenity apartment complex — the community in the Powderly community in Birmingham where Jackson went missing, according to WBMA.

Jefferson County District Attorney Danny Carr, whose office is investigating this case, told WBMA on March 4 that Jackson’s family, who attended the bond hearing for the suspects, is “shaken.”

“They’re definitely shaken. It is one thing to hear a lot of — what we call chitter chatter out there, but to be in a formal setting and hear what happened to a loved one like that could be very disheartening, obviously,” Carr said.

ABC News has reached out to Carr’s office for additional comment.

Asked if police expect to arrest any additional suspects, Fitzgerald told ABC News on Monday that based on the evidence detectives have obtained so far, “[investigators] do not see any more suspects being arrested.”

He added that while arrests have been made, the investigation is “ongoing” with detectives gathering evidence and “polishing up the case” ahead of a future trial.

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(LAS VEGAS) — Three women and a dog were found dead in two separate apartments in Las Vegas as police say they shot and killed a potential suspect in the case who confronted them with a firearm, authorities say.

The incident began on Tuesday afternoon at approximately 3:15 p.m. when officers from the North Las Vegas Police Department (NLVPD) responded to an apartment complex in the 2200 block of E. Nelson Avenue after somebody reported shots being fired nearby which could also be heard by the dispatcher on the phone, according to a statement from the North Las Vegas Police Department detailing the incident.

Police were immediately sent to the residential complex but, as they approached the courtyard, police say they encountered a man armed with a firearm who began walking towards the responding officers.

“Officers gave him multiple verbal commands to drop the firearm, but he ignored the commands and continued to walk toward them,” NLVPD said. “Two officers then discharged their duty firearms, striking the man.”

Authorities began to check nearby apartments for any potential victims related to the initial shooting reports and subsequently found three adult females and a dog deceased in two separate apartments. Additionally, a young child was found unharmed in one of the apartments.

“Medical personnel were immediately requested, and pronounced all three women and the suspect deceased,” NLVPD said.

The names of the three women who were killed as well as the cause and manner of their deaths will be released by the Clark County Coroner’s Office after the next of kin have been notified.

It is not currently known if the suspect knew any of the victims and the investigation is still in the preliminary stages.

More information will be released when it becomes available and, at this time, detectives do not believe there are any additional suspects.

This is the first NLVPD officer-involved shooting of 2024 and, per NLVPD policy, the identity of the officers involved will be released after 48 hours.

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(NEW YORK) — Two men have been charged after allegedly bombing a woman’s home and planning to release “a large python into the victim’s home to eat the victim’s daughter,” according to prosecutors.

Stephen Glosser, 37, and Caleb Kinsey, 34 — both from Richmond Hill, Georgia — are alleged to have used electronic communications to place the unnamed woman under surveillance from Dec. 2022 until Jan. 2023 “with the intent to kill, injure, harass, or intimidate,” before using an explosive device to blow up her home, according to a statement from the United States Attorney’s Office – Southern District of Georgia.

“The conspiracy charge describes using cell phones to ‘create a plan to kill, intimidate, harass, or injure the victim’ through methods including shooting arrows into the victim’s front door, acquiring and releasing ‘a large python into the victim’s home to eat the victim’s daughter,’ mailing dog feces or dead rats to the victim’s home, scalping the victim, and blowing up the victim’s home,” prosecutors have alleged when they announced the indictments against the men last Thursday.

The indictment further alleges that Glosser located the victim’s home using internet searches, mapped out a path to the victim’s residence, and then — with Kinsey — acquired and built an explosive device at Glosser’s home using Tannerite that Kinsey purchased online, according to the United States Attorney’s Office – Southern District of Georgia.

Officials say the two suspects then “used a destructive device to blow up the victim’s home” on or about Jan. 13, 2023.
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Glosser and Kinsey are now charged with stalking, use of an explosive to commit another felony offense, conspiracy to use an explosive to commit a felony, and possession of an unregistered destructive device.

Kinsey has also been given additional charges of making false statements during the purchase of a firearm and possession of firearms by a convicted felon.

If they are found guilty, the penalty for their alleged crimes carry a statutory penalty upon conviction of up to 20 years in prison, with an additional 10 years upon conviction for the charge of using an explosive to commit a felony. There is no parole in the federal system.

The case is being investigated by Bryan County Fire and Emergency Services, the Bryan County Sheriff’s Office, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Chatham County Sheriff’s Office and its K-9 unit, the Savannah Fire Department, and the Grant Parish (Louisiana) Sheriff’s Office, and Prosecuted for the United States by Southern District of Georgia Assistant U.S. Attorney L. Alexander Hamner.

Both Glosser and Kinsey are in custody awaiting further court proceedings and are considered innocent unless and until proven guilty.

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(NEW YORK) — New York City Mayor Eric Adams says NYPD officers took “appropriate action” during a violent altercation with a migrant in a city-operated shelter in the borough of Queens that was caught on camera.

In a video obtained by The New York Times, officers can be seen repeatedly striking and using a stun gun on the man, identified by the NYPD as 47-year-old Yanny Cordero, while he’s holding his 1-year-old child.

A police source described the deployment of the stun gun to ABC-owned station WABC-TV as a “dry stun,” which is when police hold the taser to a suspect and pull the trigger without firing probes, eliminating risk to the child.

Police told ABC News the child was not hurt during the incident.

An NYPD spokesperson says that on March 8, police were called to a dispute with an “intoxicated and disorderly male who was threatening staff members.” Police say Cordero refused multiple commands to give the child to someone else.

The New York Times reported Cordero denied being intoxicated, citing that he had work the next day.

A criminal complaint obtained by ABC News alleges that Cordero “tensed and flailed his arms as well as twisted and contorted his body to avoid being handcuffed.”

At one point the video appears to show three officers wrestling Cordero to the ground and pinning his head against a desk once he had been separated from the child. One of the officers can be seen punching him in the face twice as a security officer tries to wave them off and onlookers yell for them to stop hitting Cordero.

“That’s abuse,” the person filming the video can be heard saying, in Spanish. “Where are the human rights?”

It’s unclear what happened before the video.

The video also shows a woman attempting to insert herself between the officers and Cordero in an apparent attempt to stop them from subduing him before an officer pulls her away. Police say 22-year-old Andrea Parrar, whom The New York Times identified as Cordero’s wife, was arrested for interfering with the arrest.

According to a criminal complaint by the Queens District Attorney’s Office, Parrar pushed several officers and flailed her arms to avoid being handcuffed.

The complaint says the couple’s other two children, a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old, were also present during the incident.

Police told ABC News that the Administration for Children’s Services was notified regarding the children.

Cordero was arrested on multiple charges, including disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, second-degree obstructing governmental administration and three counts of endangering the welfare of a child, police confirmed to ABC News.

Parrar was charged with resisting arrest, obstructing government administration and disorderly conduct.

Mayor Adams’ office told ABC News that the family was reunited on Monday and were given a new placement in Brooklyn after requesting to be moved to a new shelter.

A spokesperson for City Hall says city officials are now investigating the incident, but did not specify which agency is leading the inquiry.

“We are aware of an incident involving a family in our care at an emergency shelter in Jamaica, Queens Friday night. The health and safety of all migrants and longtime New Yorkers in our care – especially young children – is always a top priority, and this matter is currently under investigation,” the spokesperson said.

At a pre-scheduled press conference on Tuesday, Mayor Adams said he had spoken with Police Commissioner Edward Caban about the incident and believed the officers acted appropriately.

“They wanted to get that child out of that gentleman’s hand after warning him several times, asking him to turn over the child. Several times he refused to,” Adams said. “He was violent, he was volatile. They had to take that necessary action and based on our review, those officers took appropriate action.”

The New York Immigration Coalition, an advocacy and policy organization that represents over 200 immigrant rights groups, condemned the arrest.

“We are troubled by the video taken at a migrant shelter in Queens that shows NYPD officers responding to an asylum seeker with violence, while he is holding his 1-year-old baby. Individuals in the City’s care must be actually cared for – and not hurt – by staff or police,” said Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO, New York Immigration Coalition.

“The City must hire shelter staff who are culturally competent, and bilingual or multilingual to ensure that communication breakdowns don’t lead to avoidable misunderstandings that escalate into violence. Everyone deserves due process, and we call on Mayor Adams to stop spreading inflammatory, unproven information about this case. The Queens District Attorney’s office must complete a thorough investigation that looks into the brute force used in this incident,” Awawdeh said.

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(NEW YORK) — A former Boeing employee who raised numerous concerns about the company’s production standards died from a “self-inflicted” gunshot wound Saturday, per a coroner’s report. The former employee was actively engaged in a whistleblower complaint against the company prior to his death, the employee’s attorney confirmed.

John Barnett, 62, was found by police officers on the morning of March 9 in a vehicle parked at a Holiday Inn along Savannah Highway “holding a silver hand gun in his right hand,” according to the Charleston Police Department.

Police said they were responding to a hotel worker’s call after the worker heard a “pop” from Barnett’s vehicle about 30 minutes prior to officers arriving, per the police report. Barnett had checked into the hotel on March 2 and was due to check out on March 8.

Responding officers discovered a male inside a vehicle “suffering from a gunshot wound to the head,” the incident report reads. “He was pronounced deceased at the scene.”

The Charleston Police Department said the investigation is still active.

Barnett worked for Boeing for 32 years until his retirement in 2017. He had been actively involved in litigation against the company — he was deposed before Boeing lawyers last week, according to his lawyer.

Barnett, 62, filed his whistleblower complaint shortly after his retirement from Boeing in 2017. He came forward publicly in 2019 when he and other former Boeing employees partook in interviews with The New York Times. Barnett and others accused Boeing of prioritizing profits over safety.

“John was in the midst of a deposition in his whistleblower retaliation case, which finally was nearing the end,” Barnett’s attorneys, Robert Turkewitz and Brian Knowles, said in a statement Tuesday. “He was in very good spirits and really looking forward to putting this phase of his life behind him and moving on. We didn’t see any indication he would take his own life. No one can believe it.”

Boeing has moved to dismiss the case on several occasions and has denied all of Barnett’s allegations — including claims the company put profits over safety. 

“Safety issues are immediately investigated, and changes are made wherever necessary,” said a Boeing spokesperson at the time of his lawsuit.

Upon learning of Barnett’s passing, Boeing released a statement: “We are saddened by Mr. Barnett’s passing, and our thoughts are with his family and friends.”

The news follows the completion of the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) audit of Boeing’s production lines after a Boeing 737 MAX 9 plane lost its door plug mid-flight earlier this year.

The New York Times reported Monday that Boeing failed 33 of 89 audits. Spirit Aerosystems — a supplier for Boeing that manufactures the fuselage for the 737 — failed seven of 13 audits from the FAA.

In response to the results, Boeing said it will “continue to implement immediate changes and develop a comprehensive action plan to strengthen safety and quality, and build the confidence of our customers and their passengers.”

If you are in crisis, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741-741.

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(NEW YORK) — Judge Lewis Kaplan has approved Donald Trump’s $91,630,000 bond in the defamation case brought by columnist E. Jean Carroll, according to an order filed Tuesday afternoon.

“Enforcement of the Judgment, to the extent that the Judgment awards damages, is STAYED pending the final disposition of the appeal by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit,” the order said.

The order stayed the execution of the judgment in the case while Trump appeals. If Trump’s appeal is unsuccessful, the bond ensures Carroll will be paid.

The former president had obtained an appeals bond from the Virginia-based Federal Insurance Company totaling $91,630,000 to cover the $83 million judgment in the case plus interest, according to a court filing on Friday. The conditions of the bond did not specify what assets Trump used to secure the bond.

Trump on Friday also filed a notice of appeal of the judgment to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Either paying the judgment or posting a bond for the judgment’s full amount was required for him to move ahead with the appeal.

Trump attorney Alina Habba told ABC News on Friday they’re confident their appeal will result in the judgment being overturned.

By posting a bond, Trump guaranteed that Carroll could collect the judgment if the former president exhausts his appeal, former federal prosecutor Josh Naftalis had told ABC News.

The appeal process could take more than a year, Naftalis said. Trump is still appealing the $5 million judgment a jury awarded to Carroll last May after determining the former president had sexually abused her.

The former president in January was ordered to pay $83.3 million in damages to Carroll, a former Elle magazine columnist, for defaming her in 2019 when he denied her allegation that he sexually abused her in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store in the 1990s. Trump, who said Carroll was “totally lying” and that she was “not my type,” has denied all wrongdoing.

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(NEW YORK) — Attorneys for Donald Trump say they will not invoke a formal “advice of counsel” defense when the former president is put on trial later this month for allegedly falsifying business records in New York, but they signaled in a court filing on Tuesday that Trump will argue he did not intend to break the law “because of his awareness that various lawyers were involved.”

Trump’s defense team faced a deadline this week to notify the court if they planned to assert an advice of counsel defense at the trial, which is scheduled to begin March 25.

According to the filing, defense lawyers will argue that “President Trump lacked the requisite intent to commit the conduct charged in the Indictment because of his awareness that various lawyers were involved in the underlying conduct giving rise to the charges.”

An advice of counsel defense would require that Trump prove he acted on the advice of lawyers — including proving he fully disclosed his actions to lawyers, asked for advice, learned his conduct was legal, and acted in good faith — when he paid adult film star Stormy Daniels $130,000 in hush money through his then-attorney, Michael Cohen, just days before the 2016 election. Prosecutors allege that Trump then falsified New York business records to cover up that alleged criminal conduct.

Prosecutors have argued that although it was a lawyer, Cohen, who coordinated the payments at the center of the case, the alleged scheme was long part of the Trump playbook to conceal potentially damaging information.

According to Tuesday’s filing, Trump’s defense lawyers want to instead argue that Trump was generally aware that lawyers were involved in the payments and lacked any intent to break the law.

“President Trump intends to elicit these facts from witnesses, including former AMI executives and Michael Cohen, whom we expect will testify about President Trump’s awareness of counsel’s involvement in the charged conduct. This is not a formal advice-of-counsel defense,” the filing said.

Defense lawyers flagged that the defense plans might change depending on who is called as a witness at trial and what evidence the judge permits.

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(NEW YORK) — A settlement has been reached in the challenge against Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Act, HB1557, known by LGBTQ+ advocates as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. 

The settlement, announced Monday, clarifies the scope of the legislation, which prohibits any classroom curriculum about sexual orientation or gender identity for students in kindergarten through third grade. It also restricts such lessons for older students.

“The point of yesterday’s settlement was to have clarity when there was confusion, to have safety and dignity when there was fear, and to make sure that no kid in the state of Florida has to go to school worried about what they should say, what they can say, worried about their parents, etc.,” Roberta Kaplan, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, told ABC News.

The law remains in place, but the settlement clarifies that students and educators can discuss LGBTQ+ topics, given those conversations are not part of formal curriculum. The clarifications also state that students can write about such topics in their academic work.

Notably, the settlement includes clarification on library books, stating that library books with LGBTQ+ themes may not be banned under the legislation so long as they are not being used for instruction.

Despite the clarifications, the office of Gov. Ron DeSantis — who signed the bill into law in 2022 — maintains that the bill will continue to be an effort to “keep radical gender and sexual ideology out of the classrooms of public school children.”

DeSantis and supporters of the legislation have argued that the bill is a necessary and reasonable measure to allow parents to have a say in when and how to introduce LGBTQ+ topics to children.

“As one of the many plaintiffs in this case, it is an exciting morning to wake up in Miami Dade County and know that my kids don’t need to be afraid to show who they are and how they are with the family that they have,” Amy Morrison told ABC News.

Morrison and her partner, Cecile Houry, were two of 19 plaintiffs in the case. Morrison told ABC News the bill caused fear and confusion even in their own family. She said that because of the bill, their eldest son worried about the repercussions of saying that he has two moms.

“This allows us to now go back into the classroom and have teachers and parents, educators and kids and families all know the language they absolutely can say,” Morrison said. “We can speak about our families and we can speak about who we are and that the law is not going to put that at any risk.”

The 19 plaintiffs in the case included LGBTQ+ advocacy groups, parents, students and educators, who sued the state of Florida in 2022, the day after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the bill into law.

The settlement also clarifies that the law does not apply to extracurricular activities, which allows for the reinstatement of Gay-Straight Alliances (GSAs) in schools that may have disbanded them. Kaplan said that these clarifications are vital to creating a safe, educational environment where students feel included.

“People have been afraid for two years,” Houry told ABC News. “All of those families, teachers that could no longer put a picture of their families in a classroom, all the safe place[s] that had been removed in different schools. The GSA, that it didn’t feel safe that they could operate or couldn’t find a faculty mentor to sponsor them.”

“This settlement puts a stop to all of this by saying that this is all OK. We can go back to having all those things without being afraid,” she said.

The lawsuit alleged that the bill was “impermissibly vague, was obviously motivated by hostility to LGBTQ+ persons and families, and created an enforcement system that enabled discrimination and discouraged efforts to fight it.”

Both the plaintiffs and the State of Florida claimed victory following the settlement.

“We fought hard to ensure this law couldn’t be maligned in court, as it was in the public arena by the media and large corporate actors,” General Counsel Ryan Newman said in a statement. “We are victorious, and Florida’s classrooms will remain a safe place under the Parental Rights in Education Act.”

While the law remains in place, the plaintiffs and their representation still find solace in the effect the settlement’s clarifications will have in schools.

“I’m hoping that yesterday’s settlement will return us to the road toward sanity into understanding something that I think every American agrees with – that every kid in this country has a right to go to school every day, to not worry about being bullied, to not worry about being treated improperly or unequally because of who they are or who their parents are,” Kaplan said. “That the point of public schools is for kids to be respected and to get a great education.”

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