The Florida Senate is on the cusp of passing a bill to expand a controversial 2022 law that restricts instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in schools.
Last year’s law barred such instruction in kindergarten through third grade.
Republican lawmakers labeled it the “Parental Rights in Education” law, but critics called it the “don’t say gay” bill.
The Republican-controlled Senate could vote Wednesday on a bill (HB 1069) that would broaden the law to apply to pre-kindergarten through eighth grade. The Senate took up the bill Tuesday and rejected a series of changes proposed by Democrats.
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The House passed the bill in March, meaning Senate approval would ready the issue to go to Gov. Ron DeSantis. Sen. Shevrin Jones, D-Miami Gardens, questioned why lawmakers returned to the issue this year after passing the 2022 law.
“Are we saying that young people should not learn about the diversity of the people that they reside with and their colleagues within the classroom?” Jones asked Senate sponsor Clay Yarborough, R-Jacksonville, replied that students in pre-kindergarten through eighth grade are “at more impressionable ages” and they can be “more vulnerable to inappropriate or confusing instruction on the sensitive topics.”
The bill could pass after the State Board of Education last month approved a rule change that largely prohibited instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in all grades.
The rule dealt with an educators’ code of conduct and spelled out that teachers could face suspension or revocation of their educator certificates for violations of the rule.
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The bill also would restrict the way that teachers and students can use their preferred pronouns in schools. The proposal says that it “shall be the policy” of every public school 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.”
Teachers and other school employees would be barred from telling students their preferred pronouns and would be prohibited from asking students about their preferred pronouns.
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