First Up: Florida's coming war on pronouns

Florida teachers could soon be compelled to identify students of all ages with the pronouns of the sex they were assigned at birth instead of the gender they identify with.

A bill filed Tuesday (HB 1223) would expand last year’s contentious Parental Rights in Education law, called “Don’t Say Gay” by critics. It does not yet have a Senate companion. 

“The policy of every public K-12 educational institution (is) that a person’s sex is an immutable biological trait and that it is false to ascribe to a person a pronoun that does not correspond to such person’s sex,” the bill says. It would prohibit school employees from referring to students with their “preferred personal pronoun.”

The bill also expands the prohibition of the teaching of sexual orientation or gender identity from kindergarten-3rd grade to prekindergarten-8th grade. It was filed by Republican state Rep. Adam Anderson, who took over term-limited House Speaker Chris Sprowls’ seat last November. A request for comment is pending with Anderson’s office. 

“This legislation is about a fake moral panic, cooked up by DeSantis to demonize LGBTQ people for his own political career,” Equality Florida Public Policy Director Jon Harris Maurer responded in a statement.

The governor and GOP lawmakers “are hellbent on policing language, curriculum, and culture. Free states don’t ban books or people,” he added. Similar legislation has been filed or passed in Arizona, North Dakota and other states. 

– Tristan Wood