Opinions
Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ laws undermine protections for LGBTQ teachers, students
Measures must be stricken down, enjoined, or otherwise invalidated
Formally entitled the “Parental Rights in Education Act,” Florida House Bill 1557 amends Florida Statute § 1001.42 to add a new subsection 8(c)(3), which provides: “Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.” In May of this year, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed House Bill 1069, which has been viewed as expanding H.B. 1557 by requiring that sex education classes in Florida teach that “sex is determined by biology and reproductive function at birth,” and that reproductive gender roles are “binary, stable, and unchangeable.” Among other things, the new bill also broadens the ban on classroom discussions of gender identity and sexual orientation so that it covers pre-kindergarten through eighth grade and prevents employees from using pronouns other than those that correspond with sex assigned at birth. Critics of these laws have labeled H.B. 1557 and H.B. 1069 “Don’t Say Gay” laws. We share these critics’ concerns.
Below, we highlight the potential of these laws to undermine anti-discrimination protections for teachers and students at public educational institutions in Florida and summarize litigation challenging these laws.
I. The Legal Landscape for LGBTQ Anti-Discrimination Protections in Florida
On June 15, 2020, the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, 140 S. Ct. 1731 (2020). In a 6-3 decision, the Court interpreted existing federal law to protect LGBTQ individuals from discrimination in employment and public accommodations by recognizing sexual orientation and gender identity as protected categories under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As a result of Bostock, LGBT individuals who work for an employer with fifteen (15) or more employees, and who have experienced discrimination based on their sexual orientation or gender identity, now have the right to take legal action against their employer by filing a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and/or taking their employer to court.
In light of the Supreme Court’s decision, the Florida Human Rights Commission issued a notice that clarified that the agency would now broaden its mandate to include combatting discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. Thus, after Bostock, LGBTQ Floridians, including teachers, gained vital anti-discrimination protections at work and in housing under both federal and state law.
Bostock v. Clayton County has been interpreted to protect LGBTQ students from discrimination as well. For instance, in Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board, 972 F.3d 586 (4th Cir. 2020),the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit relied on Bostock to hold that disparate treatment on the basis of a student’s sexual orientation and transgender status—in this case, barring transgender students from using school restrooms that align with their gender identity—is considered discrimination under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. Id. at 618–19. These protections are especially important for LGBTQ students in conservative states like Florida; these students may face discrimination on a direct level as well as indirectly from institutions and political players who aim to promote homophobic and transphobic rhetoric and policies.
Unfortunately, the victory represented by Bostock has been overshadowed by H.B. 1557 and H.B. 1069.
II. Harm and Confusion Created by H.B. 1557 and H.B. 1069
While it is too soon to know how H.B. 1557 and H.B. 1069 will impact the application of Bostock, there is cause for alarm. Under Florida law, if a parent raises a concern about compliance with H.B. 1557 and that concern is not “resolved by the school district,” the parent may proceed before a special magistrate or “[b]ring an action against the school district to obtain a declaratory judgment that the school district procedure or practice violates [H.B. 1557] and seek injunctive relief.” Fla. Stat. § 1001.42(8)(c)(7)(b). If the parent prevails in the suit, the court may offer the parent damages and “shall award reasonable attorney fees and court costs.” Id.
Undoubtedly, Florida’s LGBTQ teachers will face greater scrutiny and potential legal obstacles as a result of these laws. As critics have pointed out, these laws’ ambiguity and undefined terms represent a potential minefield for LGBTQ teachers. For instance, Florida law now bans instructing some students on sexual orientation. Would a gay teacher who mentions in class that he has a husband violate this law? Would a cisgender teacher with a nonbinary child be in violation if she referenced her child by their proper pronouns in front of her students?
For transgender and nonbinary teachers, the environment is even more dangerous. H.B. 1069, which went into effect on July 1, 2023, states: “An employee or contractor of a public K–12 educational institution may not provide to a student his or her preferred personal title or pronouns if such preferred personal title or pronouns do not correspond to his or her sex,” with “sex” defined in strictly “biological” terms. Fla. Stat. § 1000.071(1), (3). It is unclear whether this language (i) forbids a transgender or gender-nonconforming teacher from providing the teacher’s own preferred pronouns to students, or (ii) forbids a teacher from providing a transgender or gender-nonconforming student’s preferred pronouns to that student—or both. Ambiguities aside, this provision is likely to force transgender and nonbinary teachers in Florida back into the closet or ban them from teaching in Florida schools altogether. If transgender and nonbinary teachers are prohibited from truthfully representing their identities in front of their students, transgender and nonbinary identities are essentially banished from the classroom entirely.
Already, headlines have been made by teachers who have fallen on the wrong side of these new laws. For instance, the Hernando County School Board placed a fifth-grade teacher in Brooksville, Fla. under investigation for showing her class a Disney film that depicted a gay character. In another instance, an assistant principal in Polk County was told that she couldn’t pass out LGBTQ-inclusive “safe space” stickers because it violated the new legislation. Some teachers have publicly decried that the laws make their jobs nearly impossible and others have decided to quit teaching altogether.
While these laws are new and their impact on Florida’s LGBTQ teachers and other staff is only just beginning to be understood, the socio-political movement that paved the way for this legislation has been decades in the making. In 1977, singer and political activist Anita Bryant led an anti-LGBTQ campaign in Dade County, Florida, targeting housing and employment protections for gay individuals. Bryant was particularly concerned that the ordinance would prevent gay teachers from being fired for their sexual orientation and she argued that gay teachers posed a threat to Florida’s children. Unfortunately, the campaign was a short-term success for anti-LGBTQ activists, culminating with the repeal of a nondiscrimination ordinance. Historians note that this tactic of using the protection of children to restrict LGBTQ rights was seen even before Bryant’s crusade, with the infamous Johns Committee in 1958 targeting and eliminating LGBTQ individuals from Florida schools.
Although Bryant initially won the repeal of the ordinance, her activism spurred LGBTQ mobilization that ultimately successfully countered her bigoted efforts.
III. Lawsuits to Enjoin Enforcement
We are aware of two recently filed cases seeking to enjoin enforcement of H.B. 1557.
First is M.A. v. Florida State Board of Education, No. 4:22CV00134 (N.D. Fla.), a case that was initiated in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida on March 31, 2022. In M.A., a group of students, parents, and teachers advanced claims arising from alleged violations of the Constitution’s Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses, the First Amendment, and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. On February 15, 2023, District Judge Allen Winsor, a Trump appointee, concluded that the plaintiffs had “not alleged sufficient facts to show standing” and dismissed the case. M.A. v. Fla. State Bd. of Educ., No. 4:22-cv-134-AW-MJF, 2023 WL 2631071, at *1 (N.D. Fla. Feb. 15, 2023). In so holding, the court reasoned that the plaintiffs failed to “allege facts showing any concrete future harm that is fairly traceable to [H.B. 1557’s] enforcement and redressable by an injunction prohibiting that enforcement.” Id. at *2. On March 20, 2023, the plaintiffs appealed the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. See M.A. v. Fla. State Bd. of Educ., No. 23-10866, Dkt. 1 (11th Cir. Mar. 20, 2023). In their appellate briefing, the plaintiffs argue that the district court erred because the plaintiffs alleged sufficient facts to confer standing in the form of “three distinct injuries caused by H.B. 1557”: (i) a chilling effect on speech, (ii) denial of access to ideas and information in school, and (iii) stigma and unequal treatment in schools based on LGBT status. See M.A. v. Fla. State Bd. of Educ., No. 23-10866, Dkt. 38, at 38 (11th Cir. May 31, 2023). As of this writing, the appeal remains pending before the Eleventh Circuit.
Second is Cousins v. School Board of Orange County, Florida, No. 6:22-CV-01312 (M.D. Fla.), which was initiated in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida on July 25, 2022. The plaintiffs in Cousins were a group of students and parents, as well as a mission-driven non-profit called CenterLink, Inc, who advanced claims arising from alleged violations of the First Amendment and the Constitution’s Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses. On August 16, 2023, District Judge Wendy Berger, also a Trump appointee, dismissed the case for reasons similar to the reasons provided by Judge Winsor in the M.A. litigation. See Cousins v. Sch. Bd. of Orange Cnty., Fla., No. 6:22-cv-1312-WWB-LHP, Dkt. 143 (M.D. Fla. Aug. 16, 2023). As of this writing, the plaintiffs have not appealed the decision.
It remains unclear whether and to what extent these two cases will succeed in enjoining enforcement of H.B. 1557 and H.B. 1069. Settlement discussions are currently ongoing in the M.A. case, and we are cautiously optimistic that the plaintiffs in that case will be able to obtain some form of relief.
Whether through litigation, legislative repeal or some other means, Florida’s recently enacted anti-LGBT laws are harmful and should be stricken down, enjoined, or otherwise invalidated.
Opinions
Let love and compassion guide our response to Joe Biden’s cancer diagnosis
Former president is diminished, but he and family deserve love and prayers
When I heard Joe Biden had serious prostate cancer, I felt immediate compassion for him and his family. I am a prostate cancer survivor myself. Then I heard how Trump, and some of his MAGA Republicans, responded and was amazed at how they are able to constantly sink to new lows. Trump’s son posted on X “What I want to know is how did Dr. Jill Biden miss stage five metastatic cancer or is this yet another cover-up???” Clearly, they will never give up on being vile human beings.
The equally disgusting Joe Scarborough had on a doctor who declared he positively knows Biden must have known about his cancer years ago, although he knows nothing about the case. The reality, coming from many specialists, is at this time only Biden’s doctors know when he was diagnosed, and whether he even had regular PSA tests done, and when. Based on the latest research, the American Urological Association (AUA) age guidelines are that they do not recommend routine PSA screening for men 70 or older. This is because prostate cancer is normally very slow growing, and if you were to be diagnosed after 70, you will likely die of something else. Then you had the felon in the White House talking about “stage nine” cancer. Is he really so dumb? Guess he is as he tries to prove it nearly every time he opens his mouth. Talk about diminished.
Now is Biden diminished from what he was years ago? It is clear he is. Should the people around him have tried to hide that in order to have him run again, no! But the-then president’s hiding health issues is nothing new. Wilson was severely impaired and it is said his wife Edith ran the country for his last year in office. The same was said about Nancy Reagan when they hid Reagan’s Alzheimer’s. Kennedy hid his Addison’s disease and other infirmities, and Trump hid how sick he was from COVID, when being helicoptered to the hospital. Is it wrong to hide these things from the American public, yes, but clearly not unusual. Actually, the media is often complicit in this, which many said they were in Biden’s case. Then you have a guy like Jake Tapper who is happy to be complicit, so he can now write a book about it and make loads of money. Very sad.
I think the time has come in the case of Joe Biden, for us to just offer him and his family some love and prayers, and the hope he will be able to manage his cancer and live a long life. Then turn the page and deal with the things that will matter more to the lives of the American people today.
Those are the things the felon in the White House, and his Nazi sympathizing co-president, along with the MAGA Congress, are trying to do to them. Things like taking away their healthcare, and thereby also causing the closure of some rural hospitals. Things like the mass firings of federal workers, including thousands of veterans. Things like making it harder for our veterans to access their healthcare by cutting services at the Veterans hospitals. Things like increasing costs for groceries, and other items, due to the felon’s ineffective use of tariffs. Things like seeing college costs go up, as foreign students who pay the full fare at most schools, are sent home or denied visas. Things like making it harder to file for social security by closing so many offices, and pretending to lower drug prices, but not really doing it. Things like cutting research looking for cures for cancer, Alzheimer’s, MS, HIV/AIDS, and a host of other diseases, which will hurt people for decades to come. Things like creating havoc in the world, and bowing down to dictators. Things like walking away from our allies and making the world a less safe place for all of us, including abandoning Ukraine, and cozying up to his friend Putin. I always believed Putin has some dirt on him. Trump said Zelenskyy would be responsible for WW III. But it’s Trump who will be, if it happens. Then we must put a focus on the idiot who is secretary of HHS, RFK Jr., and whether he will allow the flu and covid vaccines, being readied for the fall, to be available in a timely manner. Will he continue to disparage all vaccines, and by doing so, cause deaths here, and around the world. Things like abandoning the fight against climate change and thereby screwing the planet and future generations.
These are the things the American public really needs to know about, and care about. It may have been wrong to hide Biden’s being diminished, but he is no longer in office, and he no longer impacts people’s lives on a daily basis. The felon in the WH does, and that is where the focus must be.
A first generation American from Queens, N.Y., Kameny was a decorated WWII veteran. With a prodigious 148 I.Q., he earned a Ph.D. in astronomy from Harvard University. In 1957 he was recruited by the Army Map Service, a pioneering agency in space exploration.
In 1953 in the wake of McCarthyism, President Eisenhower issued Executive Order 10450 that prohibited homosexuals from military or civilian employment. Having nothing to do with workplace conduct, the Army learned that Kameny might be a homosexual. When confronted, he equivocated and was terminated. Unlike then thousands of other homosexuals terminated from government employment, Kameny fought back.
He took on the military and Civil Service Commission including being the first openly gay man to file an appeal about gay rights to the U.S. Supreme Court. He helped co-found and chair the Mattachine Society of Washington, the first gay rights organization in the nation’s capital.
He wrote letters to, among others, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. He founded and chaired the Eastern Conference of Homophile Organization, the nation’s first regional gay organization.
In the 1960s homosexuality, even with a consenting adult in the privacy of one’s bedroom was criminal. The police entrapped and extorted gay men. The American Psychiatric Association classified homosexuality as a mental illness. A bar could lose its license if there was more than one homosexual in their establishment. Homosexuals were considered dangerous, deviant and demented.
Kameny coined the phrase “Gay Is Good.” He organized picketing called Annual Reminders each July 4 from 1965 to 1969 at Independence Hall. The picketers were the first to call for gay equality. The 1965 Annual Reminder had 39 activists making it then the largest demonstration for gay rights. In the mid-1960s the country had an estimated 300 gay and lesbian activists.
He published a newsletter that became the Washington Blade, now the nation’s oldest LGBTQ weekly newspaper. Kameny and Barbara Gittings, the mother of the movement that demonstrated for the right to be heard at the 1971 American Psychiatric Association meeting. Their panel at the 1972 meeting with a masked psychiatrist using a pseudonym and voice modulator was so impactful that the APA created a panel to determine if homosexuality as a mental illness was based on science or discrimination. In 1973, that classification was removed.
He advised gays and lesbians who were the subject of discharge from federal government service. He identified test cases and referred them to the ACLU, Lambda Legal and other counsel. Slowly, but surely those cases began a process for LGBTQ equality.
His efforts led D.C. to be the first city to overturn its sodomy criminal laws. He helped found the first national LGBTQ organization, the North American Conference of Homophile Organizations. His efforts laid the groundwork for HRC and National LGBTQ Task Force.
After Stonewall in June 1969, he chaired a meeting of NY, Philadelphia and D.C. activists that authorized and helped organize to help remember Stonewall the first New York Pride Parade. He believed that Stonewall could be the movement’s Boston Tea Party. He marched in that 1970 parade holding a picket emblazoned with “Gay Is Good.”
He was the first out person to run for Congress as the D.C. delegate. Money left over from his campaign was used to fund the first gay rights television commercial. In July 1975, he was the first to be advised by the Civil Service Commission that it would eliminate homosexuality as a basis for not hiring or for firing a federal civilian employee. In 1977, he attended the White House’s first meeting with gays and lesbians.
Kameny died on Oct. 11, 2011, National Coming Out Day. He lived to see marriage equality approved in several states. He attended the signing by President Obama of the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” which enabled gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military. Kameny is buried in the Congressional Cemetery. On his tombstone is inscribed “Gay Is Good.” Over 70,000 of his documents are in the Library of Congress and picket signs from the pioneering demonstrations are housed in the Smithsonian Institution.
On May 21 LGBTQ national organizations gather in front of the Supreme Court. One hundred activists will each hold a candle for his 100th birthday. Fifteen national leaders will engage in picketing similar to the 1965 picketing at the White House and Independence Hall. They will honor Frank Kameny; celebrate the 10th anniversary of marriage equality (Obergefell v Hodges, 2015); and push back on those who would attempt to render us invisible, deny our history and undermine our equality. We will remember the nation’s loss when it fired a Harvard Ph.D. in astronomy because of his status as a homosexual. History repeats itself. This month the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the federal government to terminate transgender servicemembers solely because of their sexual orientation. How far we have come. How much farther we have to travel.
Malcolm Lazin is the national chair, Kameny 100. He is the executive director, LGBT History Month and executive producer of three LGBTQ documentaries including Gay Pioneers. He was an adjunct professor of LGBT History and Rights at New College of Florida. www.kameny100.org.
Opinions
Returning to Alcatraz: Memory through a queer lens
Trump would like to ‘rebuilt and reopen’ notorious island prison
When I arrived at Alcatraz Island, what I felt wasn’t curiosity — it was discomfort. Standing before such a photogenic landscape, something felt off. As if the place was trying to erase what it truly was: a mechanism of punishment, a machine built to control and define who should be excluded. I couldn’t walk those corridors without thinking about what this place represents for so many of us: a symbol of how the state has decided, time and again, that some lives matter less.
As a queer person, what struck me wasn’t just the past Alcatraz holds — but how that past is still alive in today’s policies. As I looked into the empty cells, I thought about the many LGBTQIA+ people who have been punished simply for existing. People like Frank Lucas Bolt, the first prisoner of Alcatraz — not convicted for violence, but for “sodomy,” a label the legal system used to persecute gay men.
He was not the only one. For decades, being gay or trans was enough to end up in a federal prison or a psychiatric hospital. Not for a crime, but for defying the norm. The legal and medical systems worked hand in hand to suppress any deviation from prescribed gender and sexuality. In prisons, queer people were subjected to physical punishment, solitary confinement, and even conversion therapy. Alcatraz was not an exception — it was one of the system’s most brutal epicenters.
But the queer memory of this place isn’t found in tourist brochures. To uncover it, you have to read between the lines, search through archives that are never taught in schools, and listen to those who still carry the scars. Walking among those walls, I realized that remembering isn’t enough — we have to contest the meaning of memory itself. What isn’t told, is repeated.
That’s why, when a few weeks ago President Trump said he’d like to “rebuild and reopen Alcatraz,” I didn’t take it as just another symbolic gesture. I took it as a warning. In times of crisis, punishment becomes an easy offer: lock them up, expel them, make them disappear. And in that narrative, queer, migrant, and racialized bodies are always the first to be targeted.
The danger isn’t just in the idea of a reopened prison, but in what it represents: The longing to return to a social order that was already deeply unjust. The nostalgia for “tough-on-crime” prisons is the same one that criminalizes unhoused people, persecutes migrants, and stigmatizes queer and trans youth in public spaces. Anyone who dreams of locking up more people isn’t thinking about justice — they’re thinking about control.
In 1969, a group of Native American activists occupied Alcatraz for over a year. They did it to denounce land theft and the government’s betrayal of treaties. During their occupation, they painted a message on the island’s water tower: “Peace and Freedom. Home of the Free Indian Land.” That gesture was a radical reclamation of space, a way of saying: this island can also be a place of resistance.
Alcatraz holds many layers. It was a high-security prison, yes, but it also became the stage for one of the most powerful acts of civil disobedience in the 20th century. That tension still lingers. The question is not just what happened at Alcatraz, but what we want it to represent today. A renewed model of punishment — or a site of memory that helps us prevent more harm?
As I walked its halls, I couldn’t stop thinking about the migrant detention centers that are still full today. About trans people held in inhumane conditions. About arbitrary detentions. About those of us who, like me, crossed borders just to survive. The distance between that Alcatraz and our present is not as wide as we’d like to believe. The walls may change, but punishment still operates on the same bodies.
Standing before the empty cells, I felt what many must have felt there: the weight of abandonment, the state’s mark upon their body, the feeling that their existence was a problem. But I also felt something else: conviction. The certainty that we will no longer walk into those spaces in silence. That we will not let ourselves be labeled as “mistakes” or “deviants.” That if they try to lock us up again, they will find us organized, with memory, with dignity.
Alcatraz does not need to be rebuilt. It needs to be understood. And we — queer, racialized, migrant communities — need to transform that understanding into action: to push back against hateful rhetoric, to protect those still living under threat, and to tell our full stories. Let no one be punished again for being who they are. Let history not become a locked cell once more.
The views expressed in this article are solely my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer, colleagues, or any affiliated organization. They are shared from a personal perspective shaped by lived experience and advocacy work.
Let love and compassion guide our response to Joe Biden’s cancer diagnosis
D.C. Black Pride 2025: Events, parties, and empowerment
Cuban lawmakers to consider simplifying process for trans people to change IDs
Frank Kameny’s legacy lives on
