Florida can’t enforce pronoun law against teacher, judge rules
Orlando Sentinel | By Kara Dam | April 9, 2024
TALLAHASSEE — A federal judge on Tuesday blocked Florida education officials from enforcing a law requiring a transgender teacher to use pronouns that align with her sex assigned at birth, saying the law violated her First Amendment rights.
The 2023 law restricts educators’ use of personal pronouns and titles in schools. Violations of the law — one of several measures backed by the Republican-controlled Legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis targeting the LGBTQ community over the past few years — can result in teachers being stripped of certifications and financial penalties for school districts.
Plaintiffs Katie Wood, a transgender Hillsborough County teacher, and AV Schwandes, a nonbinary teacher fired last year by Florida Virtual School, sought preliminary injunctions as part of a lawsuit challenging the restrictions.
The challenge alleged the law violates the teachers’ First Amendment rights and runs afoul of a federal civil-rights law.
Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker issued a preliminary injunction Tuesday that blocked enforcement of the law against Wood, but the injunction does not apply statewide. Walker’s decision also denied a preliminary injunction sought by Schwandes.
“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’s ruling aid. “This time, the state of Florida declares that it has the absolute authority to redefine your identity if you choose to teach in a public school.”
Attorneys for the Florida Department of Education and other defendants asked Walker to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that the Legislature has discretion to “promote the state’s pedagogical goals and vindicate parental rights.”
Walker pointed to a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision, in a case known as Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, allowing a high-school football coach to pray with his team before games.
“Both Coach Kennedy and Ms. Wood are expressing their own personal messages about their own personal identities to their students — identities that exist independent from their roles as coach or teacher,” Walker wrote.
In granting the injunction, Walker said the teacher used her preferred pronouns before the law went into effect and that the “threat of mandatory discipline” prevents her from using them now.
“This is a classic speech injury — Ms. Wood spoke in the past and wants to speak in the future, but she is deterred by a credible threat of discipline. This court concludes that Ms. Wood has submitted sufficient evidence to establish an injury-in-fact,” he wrote.
Walker’s ruling also found that Schwandes, who uses the pronouns they/them, “has not submitted sufficient evidence to find that their speech is being chilled” by state education officials’ enforcement of the law.
