Ron DeSantis is About To Expand Florida’s 'Don’t Say Gay' Law

Governor Ron DeSantis is expected to sign off on the expansion of a law meant to keep teenagers from learning anything about the birds and the bees until at least high school. 

The expansion of the Parental Rights in Education measure—widely known as “Don’t Say Gay” because it prohibits teachers from talking about sexual orientation and gender—passed in the Florida Senate last week in a 27-12 vote. When the bill was signed into law last year, proponents reassured that it only applied to classroom instruction for grades K – 3. But in a predictable move, the goalpost has now moved even further: as of July 1, 2023, the prohibition would apply to all students from Pre-K through 8th grade, per the new law being sent to the governor’s desk. 

In high schools, teachers would not be allowed to discuss either topic in a manner that is not “age appropriate or developmentally appropriate” for their students. This comes just weeks after the Florida Department of Education (FLDOE) banned classroom instruction on sexual orientation and sexual identity in all grades. It serves as the rule to ensure educators comply with HB 1069 as law, but reads more like encouragement to perform soft censorship. 

HB 1069 says that a parent may “bring an action against the school district to obtain a declaratory judgment” and seek injunctive relief if a concern is not resolved by a school district. But FLDOE guidance for teachers says they can lose their professional license and be charged with up to a third degree felony for failing to comply. The FLDOE is a state agency and doesn’t have the ability to hand out felony charges. 

“It’s a scare tactic,” Raegan Miller, director of development at the Florida Freedom to Read Project, told Motherboard. “The law puts the onus on the district, not the teacher. What that’s resulting in is more books being removed. ‘Err on the side of caution’ is the quote in the media specialist training and that’s basically catering to the most conservative view in the room.” 

“Don’t Say Gay” is tied to another law, HB 1467, which requires that all books be selected by media specialists who hold a valid “educational media specialist” certificate. The training was originally created for school librarians with a lot of input from members of the ultra-conservative group Moms For Liberty, but things got messy earlier this year when school districts sent out memos instructing teachers to empty their classroom libraries while books were being reviewed or possibly face a third-degree felony.

The legal expansion also stipulates that teachers would be forbidden from acknowledging  transgender students as their experienced gender or addressing them by their correct pronouns. Meanwhile, other states have elected officials signing off on their own versions of “Don’t Say Gay,” including Indiana last week.

A recent PEN America report found that a series of new laws and regulations are driving book bans in schools nationwide. Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” legal expansion would also make it easier for anyone to get books they don’t like taken off school shelves, not just adults with students enrolled in a district. As soon as any book is challenged under the law, it is immediately removed pending a review.

Democratic Florida senators attempted to reduce harm by getting last minute amendments added to the bill before it could go up for a vote. At one point, Tracie Davis, the senator representing Florida’s 5th Congressional District, pointed out that making book challenges open to anyone would actually be in violation of Florida’s Parental Bill of Rights, noting that anyone “who does not want their kids’ education subject to the whim of any person in the county who wants to file a frivolous objection,” that “all I can say to them is ‘wait and see.’”