In one example of attempted compliance, a Duval County board member proposed a resolution declaring that the school board “unequivocally supports” the state’s parental rights bill and “disapproves” of provisions within the district’s LGBTQ support guide. These guides, and particularly one in Leon County that is subject of a federal lawsuit, helped inspire the parental rights expansion in 2022 as Republican lawmakers argued that the plans can go too far to keep parents in the dark about children changing their names and transitioning genders. “The law is driving division when we should have a state where all students are protected and all families are respected.”Įlsewhere, the new law has steered school districts to review their local student LGBTQ support guides to ensure that the policies are in line with the new state law.
“It epitomizes how the law’s vague and ambiguous language is erasing LGBTQ students, families, and history from kindergarten through 12th grade, without limits,” Jon Harris Maurer, Equality Florida’s public policy director, said in a written statement.
The organization, along with parents and students, is fighting the legislation in court, arguing it marks an “extraordinary government intrusion on the free speech and equal protection rights” in public schools.
School officials “had a signal to cut off my microphone, end my speech, and halt the ceremony,” Moricz said in a series of tweets detailing the experience.Įquality Florida, one of the LGBTQ advocacy groups suing the DeSantis administration over the legislation, says that the two examples amount to “blatant censorship” tied to the bill. In one case that has drawn national attention, the first openly gay class president at Pine View School in Sarasota County, Zander Moricz, claims his principal told him not bring up his LGBTQ activism or involvement in a lawsuit challenging the legislation in his upcoming graduation speech. “’Don’t Say Gay’ isn’t even a law yet and you’re already using it to target LGBTQ+ students,” JJ Holmes, a Seminole County student known as an advocate for disability rights and the LGBTQ community, told the school board last week. School officials changed their stance on the issue last week after students objected and instead are adding disclaimer stickers to clarify that students, not the school, protested the legislation. So far, the law has led to varying responses from local school leaders while also generating allegations of censorship from students speaking out against the measure.Īt Lyman High School in Seminole County, district officials have been embroiled in a censorship dispute after planning to delay the release of a yearbook to cover up photos of a student-led protest against the bill. The legislation gives parents the power to sue schools for withholding information about their children from them, putting the pressure on districts to fall in line with the law by July 1.
It also requires schools to notify parents if schools help a child transition to a different gender, among other things, or any additional monitoring for their “mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being,” language expected to have a significant effect on LGBTQ student support guides that some districts use as a resource for schools and families to help support LGBTQ students and offer recommendations on how to support students to teachers. The legislation prohibits teachers from leading classroom instruction on gender identity or sexual orientation for students in kindergarten through third grade and bans such lessons for older students unless they are “age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate.” “I don’t know if that’s the goal of the bill, but it’s very important we do have some clarity for parents and for the schools.” “What it does create is a lot of divisiveness, and it also creates a lack of clarity completely with this bill,” Nadia Combs, who chairs Hillsborough County’s school board, said at a recent school board meeting. The newly minted law, which has caused an uproar across the nation and has led to a high-profile fight between DeSantis and The Walt Disney Co., is set to go into effect July 1 and is being challenged in federal court.