A new Florida law restricting teachers’ use of pronouns and titles in public schools amounts to sex discrimination and violates the U.S. Constitution and civil rights laws, a federal lawsuit filed by three Florida educators alleges.
The lawsuit was filed Dec. 13 in the Northern District of Florida by Katie Wood, who works in the Hillsborough County School District, and two other plaintiffs. They say a section of the new law, which bars school employees from telling students that they use pronouns which don’t reflect their sex at birth, illegally prevents transgender and nonbinary teachers from expressing who they are.
The term “nonbinary” refers to people who don’t identify fully with either sex.
The new Florida law, and particularly its subsection 3, has forced one of the plaintiffs out of the teaching profession and threatens to do the same for the other two plaintiffs, according to the legal complaint.
“Subsection 3 discriminates against transgender and nonbinary public-school employees and contractors on the basis of sex, by prohibiting them from using the titles and pronouns that express who they are,” the lawsuit says.
The Florida Department of Education did not comment specifically about allegations in the lawsuit, but the department referred the Florida Record to a letter sent by Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. to the board chairwoman of the Orange County Public Schools.
“The statute prohibits people from being forced to refer to others by false pronouns,” Diaz said in the Nov. 16 letter, “and it prohibits school district employees from taking an active role in exposing students to these falsities.”
The law also bars school employees and students from being mandated to refer to people by “false pronouns” and prevents the employees from asking students which pronouns they prefer using to refer to themselves, according to Diaz.
“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 text of the law states.
The law gives the state the authority to revoke educators’ teaching credentials if they violate its provisions, and school boards can fire violators.
Subsection 3 flies in the face of the U.S. Constitution, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the lawsuit says.
“Florida has only an invidious basis – not an exceedingly persuasive or even a rational one – for discriminating in this harmful way,” the complaint says. “It also unconstitutionally restrains (the) plaintiffs’ speech in violation of the free speech clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution because it prohibits plaintiffs from using the titles and pronouns that express who they are, the same way that their colleagues do.”
The lawsuit asks the court to enjoin defendants and their officers from enforcing subsection 3. It also asks for compensatory damages, nominal damages, attorney fees and other court-related costs.
Plaintiff Wood, a transgender teacher, said she simply wants to be treated with dignity and fairness.
“There is no American right more fundamental than freedom of expression and protection from the government that weaponizes their disagreements on that expression,” Wood said in a prepared statement. “Subsection 3 violates both of these.”