“Justice” – Photo: Nejron, via Dreamstime. Altered by Todd Franson.
A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit challenging a Florida “parental rights” law restricting instruction on LGBTQ issues in schools, which opponents have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law.
U.S. District Judge Allen Winsor, of the Northern District of Florida, a Trump appointee, has issued a 25-page order dismissing the case, finding that the plaintiffs in the case — which include parents, current and former students, teachers, and LGBTQ groups Equality Florida and Family Equality — did not show they had legal standing to sue.
However, he said the plaintiffs can file a revised lawsuit by Oct. 13 seeking to block the law if they better address their standing and how the enforcement of the law harms them, reports WUSF Public Media.
The law, signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis after being passed by Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature, prohibits instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade and requires that such instructions be “age-appropriate” or “developmentally appropriate” in older grades.
But opponents of the law claim the law is rife with opportunities for teachers and administrators to discriminate against LGBTQ students and children of same-sex parents in order to avoid offending conservative parents, who are empowered to sue for alleged violations of the law.
In the lawsuit, first filed in March and amended in May, the plaintiffs claimed that the law violates their First Amendment and due process rights. They claim that, in order to comply with the law, teachers will restrict students’ free speech rights, ban LGBTQ-related books from libraries or classrooms, and prohibit student-run LGBTQ clubs, such as Gender and Sexuality Alliances from either forming or from receiving equal access to resources as other student clubs.
For example, Zander Moricz, a plaintiff and 18-year-old former senior class president at Pine View School in Osprey, Florida, said he was told by teachers that he would be restricted from discussing LGBTQ rights in class — even before the law officially went into effect.
For example, when he was slated to address his class at his graduation ceremony, Moricz clams administrators told him they would cut his microphone if he dared to talk about his activism on behalf of LGBTQ rights. So Moricz gave a graduation speech using the euphemism “curly hair” as a stand-in for the term “gay.”
Another plaintiff, known as “M.A.,” from Palmetto, Florida, claims administrators have sought to block him from establishing a GSA at his school, using the “Don’t Say Gay” law as justification.
In their amended complaint, the plaintiffs’ lawyers argued that the measure is unconstitutional, discriminatory and “clearly the produce of animus towards Florida’s LGBTQ community.” The lawsuit named DeSantis, the State Board of Education, the Florida Department of Education, Education Commissioner Manny Diaz, Jr., and seven country school boards.
“[The ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law] piles one [constitutional] violation on top of another,” lawyers for the plaintiffs wrote. “It offends principles of free speech and equal protection by seeking to censor discussions of sexual orientation or gender identity that recognize and respect LGBTQ people and their families. It offends due process by using broad and vague terms to define its prohibitions — thus inviting discriminatory enforcement and magnifying its chilling effect on speech. And it arises from discriminatory purposes and outdated sex-based stereotypes that offend deeply rooted constitutional and statutory requirements.”
But lawyers representing the state argued, in June, the the plaintiffs did not have legal standing and had not demonstrated that the Legislature “acted out of animus” toward LGBTQ people.
“The bill reflects no governmental preference about what students should learn about sexual orientation and gender identity,” they wrote. “Those subjects must be taught appropriately, and, for the youngest children, they may be taught by parents, not in public-school classroom settings. That is a legitimate [state] interest.”
While Winsor did not rule on the constitutionality of the law, he did side with the state’s lawyers in ruling the plaintiffs lacked standing.
“The principal problem is that most of plaintiffs’ alleged harm is not plausibly tied to the law’s enforcement so much as the law’s very existence,” Winsor wrote in his opinion. “Plaintiffs contend the law’s passage, the sentiment behind it, the legislators’ motivation, and the message the law conveys all cause them harm. But no injunction can unwind any of that.”
For example, he noted that violations of the law would be enforced against school districts, not individual teachers.
“With or without the law, school districts direct teachers as to what they may and may not teach,” the judge wrote. “Plaintiffs do not allege otherwise; they do not assert, for example, that Florida’s public-school teachers may teach whatever lessons they wish. So to the extent plaintiffs allege that some teachers or others wish to provide ‘classroom instruction . . . on sexual orientation or gender identity’ to students ‘in kindergarten through grade 3,’ they would have to show (at a minimum) that without the law their individual school district would allow it. Yet plaintiffs offer no specific allegation that any teacher would be providing such classroom instruction absent HB 1577.”
A second lawsuit challenging the law was filed in July in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida against four school boards on behalf of same-sex and heterosexual couples and their children, Will Larkins, an gay and nonbinary rising senior at Winter Park High School in Orange County, Florida; and Centerlink, Inc., an organization that supports local LGBTQ groups and community centers.
That lawsuit alleges that the law restricts the plaintiffs’ right to free speech and expression under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and deprives them of their rights to due process and equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment. The four school districts are required to submit their response to the charges against them by Oct. 18.
Oregon State Rep. Cyrus Javadi announced last Friday that he's switching from the Republican to the Democratic Party, blasting GOP leaders for obstructing legislation that would have benefited his constituents and for pursuing an anti-LGBTQ agenda that "isolates minority communities when politically convenient."
Javadi, who confirmed on Substack he will seek re-election next year as a Democrat, boosts his new party's margin in the Oregon House to 37 seats out of 60.
In his Substack post, Javadi said Republicans blocked his efforts to help his district at every turn, prioritizing opposition to Democratic bills as a strategy rather than judging proposals on their merits.
John Reid, the gay Republican nominee for Virginia lieutenant governor, has defended the right of his running mate, current Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, to oppose same-sex marriage -- even though he personally disagrees with her on the issue.
Speaking on the conservative talk radio program The Wilkow Majority on SiriusXM, Reid said he and Earle-Sears are "willing to put aside our differences" to support policies they believe are best for Virginia. Host Andrew Wilkow then asked Reid to name an issue on which the two disagree.
"She's not for gay marriage. She's 100 percent against it," Reid said. "You know, she's from Jamaica, and her religious background tells her a very different narrative than my Episcopalian white-guy Virginia background. I understand!"
In a heated October 9 debate in Virginia’s governor’s race, Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears defended her belief that treating LGBTQ people differently from heterosexual or cisgender individuals does not amount to discrimination.
Earle-Sears, who trails in most public polls, used the debate as a last-ditch attempt to paint former Democratic Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger as extreme, out of touch, or untrustworthy. She pressed Spanberger on issues like transgender participation in sports and restroom access. She attacked her for not calling on Democratic attorney general nominee Jay Jones to withdraw after his comments appeared to endorse political violence.
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