Florida lawmakers ramp up bills that would affect LGBTQ+ students

As lawmakers in Florida take aim at prohibiting instruction around racial equality in classrooms, some are now also trying to limit conversation about gender and sexual orientation in schools with a bill that will be voted upon later this spring.

The bill’s sponsors, including Sen. Dennis Baxley, a Republican from Central Florida, present it as a mechanism to preserve parents’ rights in education, but critics say it would ultimately police what students and teachers can discuss in classrooms regarding gender and sexuality.

It was one of five bills filed during the first week of Florida’s 2022 legislative session that would affect LGBTQ+ students in school, and those seeking medical care.

The bills represent an increase in such legislation. Last year, lawmakers passed the transgender athlete ban, which the bill’s sponsors called the “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act,” banning transfeminine athletes from competing on girl’s and women’s school sports teams. But prior to that, there was very little legal activity from Tallahassee that sought to legislate gender and sexual orientation.

“This is an agenda that has nothing to do with the life of Floridians,” said Nadine Smith, executive director of Equality Florida, a LGBTQ+ nonprofit group. “These bills would have a chilling effect, banning discussions of the existence of LGBTQ+ people, making students more vulnerable, more isolated, invading the most personal conversations between doctors, parents, and young people.”

The bills are aimed at “dividing, scapegoating, and dehumanizing,” and would ban honest conversations about race and gender identity, Smith said, pointing out that LGBTQ students often don’t live in safe or supportive home environments, making teachers or doctors the only safe adults they have access to.

Other lawmakers have partnered with Equality Florida to publicly oppose the bills, which they said would harm all LGBTQ+ Floridians.

Here’s a look at some of those bills and what they would mean for LGBTQ+ students and young people if passed.

Transgender youth medical care ban

Rep. Anthony Sabatini, R-Howey-in-the-Hills, filed House Bill 211 on the first day of the legislative session, reviving it after the bill failed in 2021.

The bill on Youth Gender and Sexual Identity, also called the “Vulnerable Child Protection Act,” would criminalize health care practitioners who provide gender affirming medical care, such as puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy, for minors.

Backers believe children should not be able to delay puberty or otherwise stray from their sex assigned at birth. The only exception the bill provides is a health care practitioner “acting in accordance with a good faith medical decision of a parent or guardian,” or if the child is intersex, meaning they were born with any of several variations in sex characteristics.

The text does not clarify subjective language around what could be considered a “good faith medical decision.”

The bill had its first reading Jan. 11. If passed, it would go into effect on July 1.

Dr. Gary Howell, a psychologist who says he’s worked with almost 1,000 LGBTQ+ patients in Florida since 2012, critiqued the bill at a recent Equality Florida news conference.

“These bills stand to put more danger in the way of individuals seeking healthcare,” he said, adding that it can be difficult for transgender patients to find a provider who affirms and embraces their transgender identity. That could mean prescribing hormone replacement therapy, hormone blockers, and using the patient’s proper pronouns and name despite what might be on medical forms.

“Not allowing qualified professionals to do their jobs is going to increase suicide attempts and completed suicides,” he said. “We already know this is a high-risk population. Suicide is a daily conversation in my practice.”

Protections of medical conscience/health care refusal

Senate Bill 1820, and an identical bill in the House (HB 747), would allow health care providers and insurers to deny a patient any sort of care on the basis of the providers’ religious, moral, or ethical beliefs. That would include denying LGBTQ+ patients care.

It would also give those who deny the care immunity from civil, criminal, or administrative liability for denying to care for a patient.

The bill “prioritizes the beliefs of healthcare providers above a patient’s well-being,” Equality Florida wrote in a news release.

Sen. Dennis Baxley is behind this bill, as well as two others that limit discussions on gender and sexuality in schools.

“I think it’s onerous to ask people to do procedures that violate their personal conscience,” Baxley told the South Florida Sun Sentinel in an interview on Friday.

Baxley said the bill would affect elective procedures, such as abortions and gender affirming care. “It doesn’t deny their [the patient’s] right to access that procedure, but also protects the individual who has a conscience reason they don’t want to perform it,” he said.

Parents’ rights in education/’Don’t say gay’

SB 1834/HB 1557 does not ban LGBTQ+ conversations outright. Instead, it prohibits a school district from encouraging classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity until middle school.

Theoretically, that would include conversations about being LGBTQ+ or questioning, but also conversations about being cisgender and heterosexual.

Lawmakers who oppose the measure, including Rep. Carlos G. Smith, D-Orlando, and Rep. Michele Rayner, D-St. Petersburg, questioned whether that would be the reality in practice. They dubbed it the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, calling it an attempt to put LGBTQ+ people back in the closet, erase their experiences and set back the progress of the last 50 years since the 1969 Stonewall Riots sparked the modern day Pride movement.

“The ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill... it’s going to effectively erase history by banning classroom discussion about anything gay or trans in K-5,” said Smith during Equality Florida’s news conference. “That’s what the bill does. The language is very clear. There’s a lot of homophobic people who are out there who don’t think any conversation about the existence of LGBTQ people is age-appropriate.”

Smith described an example of a fourth grade student who writes an essay about their two dads and wants to present it to the classroom, and whether their essay would be treated the same as a student who wrote an essay about their hetero-normative mom and dad.

“They’re not trying to censor conversations about straight cisgender people,” he said. “This is about making our community invisible and making conversations about our existence taboo, inappropriate, prohibited.”

Mycheal, a genderqueer student in Florida, spoke at the news conference alongside their parents about the harm the bill could cause.

“Something that really upsets me about this is that they’re treating talking about being trans and discovering these identities as if it’s a crime,” they said. “Being trans is just normal. It’s not normalized. But it is normal. The only way I discovered this identity inside myself is because I had these conversations.

“If they’re afraid of not having control over our identities and lives, that’s not our fault. We’re just trying to grow up and know who we are. We’re just trying to be kids.”

Sen. Baxley sponsored SB 1834. He would not respond to arguments that it would harm LGBTQ+ students, saying only that the bill is needed to give parents greater control over their child’s curriculum.

“I think the parents should have a more predominant role in what they’re being exposed to and taught,” he said.

Reproductive health and disease education/restricting access to sex ed

That same sentiment is behind HB 1305/SB 1842, which Baxley is also sponsoring. The bill on reproductive health and disease education would require school districts to notify parents and request their written consent before teaching reproductive health. It would prohibit schools from exposing students to sexual education without the parents’ or guardians’ written consent.

Baxley says the idea behind parents opting their children in is to give “a lot more attention to age appropriateness.” Under current laws, parents can opt their children out of instruction on reproductive health if they so choose. Under Baxley’s proposal, schools would not be able to teach sex ed to students whose parents did not specifically opt them in to the instruction.

Lawmakers who oppose the measure pointed out that age appropriateness is vague and subjective.

Equality Florida says the bill creates barriers for young people to access education to make responsible decisions about their sexual health at an important point in their lives. Many students start experimenting with sex regardless of their parent’s knowledge or approval.

“We should instead be teaching them accurate, scientifically sound information about safety, relationships, consequences, and their own bodies. Stigmatizing sex education does the opposite of keeping kids safe,” Equality Florida wrote in a news release.

Brooke Baitinger can be reached at: bbaitinger@sunsentinel.com, 954-422-0857 or on Twitter: @bybbaitinger