A federal judge has sided with a Hillsborough County transgender high school teacher by barring Florida education officials from enforcing a section of a state parental rights law on pronoun use against the teacher.
Judge Mark Walker of the Northern District of Florida approved a preliminary injunction in an April 9 opinion for educator Katie Wood. A section of the state’s Parental Rights in Education Act violates Wood’s First Amendment right of free speech and expression, Walker said.
The law subjects Florida educators to possible dismissal or loss of their teaching credential if they use pronouns that don’t reflect their biological sex. Wood reflected on Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” in granting the injunction.
“In sharing her preferred title and pronouns, Ms. Wood celebrates herself and sings herself – not in a disruptive or coercive way, but in a way that subtly vindicates her identity, her dignity and her humanity,” Walker said.
The provision of the law in question – Section 1000.071(3) – had the effect of silencing Wood, forcing her to take on an identity that is not her own, the opinion states.
“The state of Florida has not justified this grave restraint, and so the United States Constitution does not tolerate it,” Walker said. “Ours is a Union of individuals, celebrating ourselves and singing ourselves and being ourselves without apology.”
The Florida Department of Education has 30 days to appeal the ruling to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeal. In the meantime, the litigation on the merits of the case can proceed before Walker in district court, according to Sam Boyd, senior supervising attorney at the Southern Poverty Law Center.
“Judge Walker’s ruling is an important recognition of the principle that trans people have a right to be teachers and to engage in public life,” Boyd, who represents the plaintiffs, told the Florida Record.
Another Florida plaintiff, a teacher who doesn’t identify fully with either sex, was denied a similar injunction because the plaintiff did not submit adequate evidence demonstrating her speech was violated as a result of the pronoun provision of the law, according to the judge’s order.
The ruling sends a positive message to trans and nonbinary educators that they should be able to use titles that reflect their identities, according to a prepared statement by the plaintiffs’ attorneys.
“No one should have to change or hide who they are to do the work they love,” the attorneys’ statement says. “Katie Wood led by example, as the court agreed that her dedication to her students takes precedence.”
Neither plaintiff in the case demonstrated a likelihood that their rights under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 were violated. The federal civil rights law bans discrimination based on religion, national origin, color, race and sex, according to the opinion.
“I am hopeful that this ruling will encourage those who feel powerless to stand up for themselves,” Wood said in a prepared statement.. “Where there is pain, there is power. And anything can happen when good people stand up together.”