Human Rights Campaign issues Florida travel advisory

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation’s largest LGBTQ rights group, is warning against travel to Florida, citing the passage of several new state laws that target LGBTQ people.

In an announcement on Tuesday, HRC said it had partnered with the Florida LGBTQ advocacy group Equality Florida to issue an updated travel advisory to the state.

Equality Florida released its original warning in April, after several measures to limit access to gender-affirming health care and abortion and relax restrictions on firearms advanced through the legislature.

No fewer than six bills targeting the rights of LGBTQ people were adopted this year by Florida’s GOP-controlled legislature, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Four of them were signed into law last week by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is expected to jump into the 2024 presidential election on Wednesday.

“Taken in their totality, Florida’s slate of laws and policies targeting basic freedoms and rights pose significant risk to the health and safety of many considering relocation and/or temporary travel to the state,” HRC and Equality Florida’s travel advisory reads.

Reports of the state becoming an increasingly hostile place for LGBTQ people have already begun to surface. Florida organizers this month called off several LGBTQ Pride events scheduled for June, citing new laws that “have created a climate of fear and hostility” for LGBTQ Floridians.

A Florida elementary school teacher this month announced she was being investigated by the state Education Department after she showed her students “Strange World,” an animated Disney movie with a gay character. 

Last week, health care providers including Planned Parenthood said they would pause gender-affirming medical care in Florida to comply with a new law restricting transition-related care for transgender adults, despite being billed by Republicans in the legislature as a measure to protect young children from making medical decisions they may later regret.

“Because of Ron DeSantis and his frenzied appeal to extremists, LGBTQ+ people in Florida are finding themselves in a state of emergency every single day,” HRC President Kelley Robinson said Tuesday in a news release announcing the updated travel advisory.

HRC is the latest in a growing group of civil rights organizations to issue a travel advisory to Florida. The NAACP issued its own advisory over the weekend, claiming the state has become “hostile to Black Americans” under DeSantis’s leadership. 

Responding to a new state immigration law requiring employers to prove that their workers are legal citizens, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), a Latino advocacy group, this month also advised against traveling to Florida.

“We see it as our duty to join Equality Florida – and LULAC and the NAACP – to provide guidance to our community,” Robinson said Tuesday.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) on Tuesday issued what he described as a travel advisory for “socialists visiting Florida,” warning that the state is “openly hostile toward Socialists, Communists, and those that enable them.”

DeSantis’s office, when asked to comment on the updated travel advisory – as well as advisories issued by the NAACP, LULAC and Scott – pointed The Hill to recent tourism data showing the state had received a record number of visitors between January and March.

“This is nothing more than a stunt,” Jeremy Redfern, DeSantis’s press secretary, told The Hill in an email.