Judge temporarily blocks Florida teacher preferred pronoun ban
- Florida teachers sued the state over a law restricting their pronoun use
- Judge grants temporary injunction, citing First Amendment violation
- Can’t dictate teachers’ self-references to students: Judge
FILE – Florida House Representative Michele Rayner, left, hugs her spouse, Bianca Goolsby, during a march at city hall in St. Petersburg, Fla., on Saturday, March 12, 2022, to protest the controversial “Don’t say gay” bill passed by Florida’s Republican-led legislature and now on its way to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ desk. Florida’s state government and LGBTQ+ advocates have settled a lawsuit challenging a law that bars teaching about sexual orientation and gender identity in public schools. (Martha Asencio-Rhine/Tampa Bay Times via AP, File)
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(NewsNation) — A federal judge sided with three Florida transgender and nonbinary educators, allowing them to use their preferred pronouns, despite a state law that bans teachers from using pronouns that don’t align with their birth sex.
U.S. District Judge Mark Walker granted a temporary injunction against the law, stating that it violates the First Amendment rights of Katie Wood, a transgender Hillsborough County teacher, by barring her from expressing her personal identity as a woman.
“Once again, the State of Florida has a First Amendment problem. Of late, it has happened so frequently, some might say you can set your clock by it,” Walker wrote in the preliminary injunction order. “The question before this Court is whether the First Amendment permits the State to dictate, without limitation, how public-school teachers refer to themselves when communicating to students. The answer is a thunderous ‘no.'”
Wood and two other educators sued the Florida Department of Education in December, arguing the law is discriminatory and a violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The state law, which took effect in July, states school employees cannot tell students to call employees by their preferred titles or pronouns if the preference does not correspond to their sex assigned at birth.
Teachers who don’t follow the law risk losing their jobs and certifications.
Prior to the law, the teacher asked students to call her “Ms. Wood,” but that is no longer a requirement.
Florida argued Wood had no free speech right to use her preferred pronouns in class because identifying herself to students is part of her job.
Walker disagreed, saying Wood’s gender identity was a core part of her identity, and blocked the law from being applied to Wood pending the outcome of her lawsuit.
“Taken to its extreme, Defendants’ argument permits the state to rename public school teachers by virtue of the fact that they have been hired to teach — and therefore speak — to students,” Walker wrote.
However, the judge refused to block the ban statewide, saying Wood had challenged the law as unconstitutional as it applies to her and not on its face.
Walker also declined to issue a similar ruling for a second plaintiff, AV Schwandes, who is nonbinary and claims they were fired for continuing to use the honorific “Mx.” in school. Walker said Schwandes could not prove they would be harmed by the state law and were thus entitled to an injunction because they do not currently work for a public school in Florida.
The case is among the latest to challenge laws adopted by Florida and other Republican-led U.S. states aimed at limiting discussions of gender identity and sexual orientation in schools. Critics call them the “Don’t Say Gay” laws and claim they are unlawful and harmful to LGBTQ people.
Last year, Florida education officials voted to ban classroom instruction on those topics in all public school grades. Florida last month agreed to settle a legal challenge to that decision by limiting the ban to kindergarten through third grade.
NewsNation affiliate WFLA and Reuters contributed to this report.