A newly introduced Florida bill would bar state and local agencies and nonprofit groups that receive state funds from recognizing an employee’s preferred gender pronouns if they differ from the individual’s biological sex.
House Bill 599, authored by Rep. Ryan Chamberlin (R-Belleview), would prevent workers or contractors of the specified employers from being required to use certain titles and pronouns, from providing them to others and from being asked by the employer to provide the titles or pronouns.
“It is the policy of the state 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 measure also attempts to regulate how employees of the designated employers interact with each other.
“An employee or a contractor may not be required, as a condition of employment, to refer to another person using that person's preferred personal title or pronouns if such personal title or pronouns do not correspond to that person's sex,” a draft of the measure, which was filed on Nov. 21, states.
A spokesman for Equality Florida, which seeks to end discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, said the bill would impose “extreme anti-LGBTQ ideology” in both public and private workplaces.
“The legislation targets the rights of transgender workers and goes far beyond the regulation of pronouns to impose unprecedented political control over the activities of all nonprofits and LGBTQ or affiliated charities,” Carlos Guillermo Smith told the Florida Record in an email. “HB 599 also gives anti-LGBTQ employees special privileges under the law, making a mockery of the Florida Civil Rights Act intended to protect minorities from workplace discrimination.”
Equality Florida views the measure in the context of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ support for what critics’ consider a series of undemocratic legal changes, Smith said, and it will oppose the bill during the coming legislative session
The initial draft of the bill seems to emphasize the protection of those employees’ religious or moral beliefs.
“It is an unlawful employment practice for an employer to take adverse personnel action against an employee or a contractor because of the employee's or contractor's deeply held religious or biology-based beliefs, including a belief in traditional or biblical views of sexuality and marriage, or the employee's or contractor's disagreement with gender ideology, whether those views are expressed by the employee or contractor at or away from the worksite,” the bill states.
Those who feel their rights under the law have been violated would be able to file a state administrative complaint with the Florida Commission on Human Relations, or the attorney general could file a complaint. But the measure would also allow aggrieved parties to file civil lawsuits to attempt to recover a damages award as well as up to $100,000 in punitive damages, according to current Florida statutes.
One advocate of LGBTQ rights. Harvard law professor Allejandra Caraballo, said the Florida measure would in effect ban all nonprofits in the state that advocate on behalf of trans-gender rights. The bill’s provisions make it unlawful for a designated employer to mandate, as a condition of employment, training or instruction dealing with “sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.”