New Lawsuit over Florida's 'Don't Say Gay' Law
Florida's "Don't Say Gay" law has sparked another lawsuit. Filed on July 26, the suit says that the law impinges free speech rights and deliberately targets LGBTQ+ youth.
NBC News reported that several organizations — "Lambda Legal, the Southern Poverty Law Center and Southern Legal Counsel — filed a lawsuit on behalf of two Florida couples and their children; Florida high school student Will Larkins; and CenterLink, an international member-based association of LGBTQ centers."
The Miami Herald specified that the suit "seeks to block the school boards in Orange, Indian River, Duval and Palm Beach counties from carrying out the law," which, the suit contends, "violates First Amendment, due-process and equal-protection rights and improperly chills discussion of issues such as gender identity and sexual orientation."
NBC News noted that among the complaints cited in the suit was the measure's "vigilante enforcement mechanism," which empowers parents to bring suit against schools if they think the law, which forbids classroom discussion of LGBTQ+ issues through third grade or where not "age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate" in other grades, has been broken.
The suit takes issue with that, stating, "The law is profoundly vague and requires schools to ban undefined broad categories of speech, based on undefined standards such as 'appropriateness.'"
Moreover, the law's "intentionally vague and sweeping scope" acts as an invitation to "parents who oppose any acknowledgement whatsoever of the existence of LGBTQ+ people to sue, resulting in schools acting aggressively to silence students, parents, and school personnel," the suit says.
The lawsuit also adds that "The law, by design, chills speech and expression that have any connection, however remote, to sexual orientation and gender identity."
There are now at least two suits that have been filed as a result of the law, which took effect at the start of this month. NBC News recalled that The National Center for Lesbian Rights filed a lawsuit immediately following Gov. Ron DeSantis signing the "Don't Say Gay" bill into law last March.
That suit named "Gov. Ron DeSantis, the State Board of Education, the Florida Department of Education, Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. and several school boards" as defendants, the Herald noted.
Attorneys for the state of Florida filed a motion asking for the earlier suit to be dismissed, the Herald recalled, with the motion claiming that "The bill reflects no governmental preference about what students should learn about sexual orientation and gender identity," and arguing that "Those subjects must be taught appropriately and, for the youngest children, they may be taught by parents, not in public-school classroom settings."
But critics say that the law will almost certainly not be enforced in a manner that is even-handed, and its restrictions on references to sexuality and gender identity are not expected to result in policies forbidding teachers mentioning their own heterosexual unions or allowing children to discuss their mixed-gender parents. A July 2 article in UK newspaper The Guardian noted that even before the law came into effect on July 1, "lawyers... told teachers in Orange county public schools that they should be careful not to wear rainbows; avoid mentioning same-sex spouses or displaying any pictures of them; and ensure they remove safe-space stickers from their classroom doors."
"So there you go: the party that professes to love free speech and small government has pushed through a law that means a rainbow sticker could end a teacher's career," The Guardian added.