New Florida bill would expand classroom ban on sexual orientation, gender identity

The legislation would broaden the policies of the 'Don't Say Gay' bill

by Jared Gans | Feb. 28, 2023

A new billboard welcoming visitors to “Florida: The Sunshine ‘Don’t Say Gay or Trans’ State’ is seen Thursday, April 21, 2022, in Winter Park, Fla. Billboards, which are being placed in key areas with high visitor traffic and visibility, are part of a new advertising campaign launched by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). (AP Photo/John Raoux) (AP Photo/John Raoux)

Story at a glance

A new WalletHub survey looked at the 182 largest cities in the U.S. to see which places are the happiest.

The survey found that Fremont, Calif., just outside of San Fransisco, is the happiest city in the U.S.

While different things make different people happy, the survey linked Fremont residents’ annual income, low divorce rate and low depression rates as contributing factors to the city’s happiness level.

A new Florida bill would expand the state’s ban on classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in public schools.

The legislation, filed Tuesday by state Rep. Adam Anderson (R), would expand on the Parental Rights in Education law, which has been denounced by critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, in prohibiting instruction from pre-K through eighth grade. State law currently only bans it from kindergarten through third grade.

The bill would also expand the law to apply to charter schools.

It would further prevent employees, contractors and students of a public K-12 school from being required to refer to someone else by their pronouns if they do not match that of their sex assigned at birth.

“It shall be the policy of every public K-12 educational institution that is provided or authorized by the Constitution and laws of Florida that a person’s sex is an immutable biological trait and that it is false to ascribe to a person a pronoun that does not correspond to such person’s sex,” the bill states.

The legislation would prohibit employees and contractors in public K-12 schools from using a student’s name and pronouns if they do not correspond to what they were assigned at birth. The employees and contractors also could not be asked to do so by their superiors or penalized for not doing so.

Anderson told The Hill in a statement that the bill would ensure students are being taught age-appropriate content.

“This bill promotes parental rights, transparency, and state standards in Florida schools. It requires that lessons for Florida’s students are age-appropriate, focused on education, and free from sexualization and indoctrination,” he said.

The Parental Rights in Education bill that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed into law last March and set off an outpouring of criticism from opponents who say the legislation is designed to demonize members of the LGBTQ community and deny that they exist.

Equality Florida, a group that advocates for LGBTQ civil rights, slammed the new bill in a release, saying that it “doubles down” on a vague and discriminatory law that has been demonstrated to create negative consequences.

“Don’t Say LGBTQ policies have already resulted in sweeping censorship, book banning, rainbow Safe Space stickers being peeled from classroom windows, districts refusing to recognize LGBTQ History Month, and LGBTQ families preparing to leave the state altogether. This legislation is about a fake moral panic, cooked up by Governor DeSantis to demonize LGBTQ people for his own political career,” Jon Harris Maurer, the public policy director of the organization, said in the release.

The Parental Rights in Education law has faced multiple legal challenges multiple legal challenges since it was signed into law.

Updated: 8:01 p.m. ET