Settlement Reached on Florida's "Don't Say Gay" Law

Ron DeSantis boasted that ”Florida is where woke goes to die” in his victory speech after overwhelmingly winning reelection in the 2022 midterms. That was the peak of DeSantis’ political career before his now-aborted presidential campaign.

Now a settlement has been reached in a two-year-old lawsuit brought by a coalition of parents, students, and LGBTQ+ advocacy groups that challenged one of the cornerstones of DeSantis’ “anti-woke agenda”—the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” statute.

In March 2022, DeSantis signed the Parental Rights in Education Act, which prohibited classroom instruction about gender identity and sexual orientation in kindergarten through third grade, even though such instruction was not offered. Just days later, a federal complaint was filed that called the bill “blatantly unconstitutional.”  A year later, DeSantis signed a new measure that restricted such lessons through high school.

The Associated Press reported that since 2022, at least six other Republican-controlled states—Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, and North Carolina—have used Florida’s law as a model to pass prohibitions on classroom instruction on gender identity or sexual orientation.  

A Washington Post analysis of FBI data found that school hate crimes targeting LGBTQ+ people have sharply risen in recent years, climbing fastest in states that have passed laws restricting LGBTQ+ rights in schools.

“What [the Florida] settlement does, is, it re-establishes the fundamental principal, that I hope all Americans agree with, which is every kid in this country is entitled to an education at a public school where they feel safe, their dignity is respected and where their families and parents are welcomed,” Roberta Kaplan, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs, told The Associated Press in an interview. “This shouldn’t be a controversial thing.”  If Kaplan’s name sounds familiar it’s because she led the legal team representing writer E. Jean Carroll in her sexual battery and defamation lawsuits against former President Donald Trump, securing nearly $90 million in jury verdicts.

 Under the terms of the settlement, the Florida Board of Education will send instructions to every school district saying the Florida law doesn’t prohibit discussing LGBTQ+ people, nor prevent anti-bullying rules on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity or disallow Gay-Straight Alliance groups. The settlement also spells out that the law is neutral—meaning what applies to LGBTQ+ people also applies to heterosexual people—and that it doesn’t apply to library books not being used for instruction in the classroom. The law also doesn’t apply to books with incidental references to LGBTQ+ characters or same-sex couples, “as they are not instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity any more than a math problem asking students to add bushels of apples is instruction on apple farming,” according to the settlement.

The settlement is welcome because there is a link between school hate crimes targeting LGBTQ+ people and states with laws restricting their rights in schools. 

It seems that some of the enthusiasm for anti-LGBTQ+ legislation might be waning now that DeSantis is out of the presidential race. The Florida Legislature adjourned last Friday, March 8, leaving 21 of 22 anti-LGBTQ+ bills effectively killed, according to writer Erin Reed. These included laws that would have expanded “Don’t Say Gay” policies to the workplace; ban Pride flags in schools and government buildings; permit student organizations to exclude transgender people; exempt transgender youth from child abuse provisions; and allow calling someone racist, sexist, homophobic or transphobic to be treated as defamation.