TALLAHASSEE – Three teachers filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday alleging that a new state law restricting titles and pronouns in schools unconstitutionally discriminates against transgender and non-binary educators.
The lawsuit is the latest challenge to a series of measures championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis and passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature that have targeted transgender children and adults and other LGBTQ people.
The case focuses on part of a 2023 law that says a school employee “shall not provide a student with his or her preferred personal title or pronouns if such preferred personal title or pronouns do not correspond to his or her gender”.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are transgender teachers in Hillsborough and Lee counties and a non-binary teacher who was fired from the Florida Virtual School in October after refusing to drop the title “Mx.” and the pronouns “they/them.”
The law “discriminates against transgender and nonbinary public school employees and contractors on the basis of sex by prohibiting them from using the titles and pronouns that express who they are,” the plaintiffs’ lawyers wrote.
The pronoun and title bans also violate employees’ First Amendment rights and civil rights laws, the lawsuit says.
The new law “requires Plaintiffs to drop their titles and pronouns at the schoolhouse gate because they are not the titles and pronouns Florida prefers for the gender it deems them to be,” the plaintiffs’ lawyers argued.
The lawsuit, filed in the federal Northern District of Florida, asks Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker to block enforcement of the law and award compensation to the teachers.
The plaintiffs are Hillsborough County high school teacher Katie Wood; a Lee County teacher identified as “Jane Doe”; and AV Schwandes, a non-binary Orange County teacher who was fired from the Florida Virtual School in October.
The defendants include State Education Commissioner Manny Diaz, the Department of Education, the State Board of Education and its seven members, other state education officials, and the school boards in Lee and Hillsborough counties.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the teachers by attorneys from the Southern Poverty Law Center, Southern Legal Counsel, Inc. and Altshuler Berzon LLP of San Francisco.
It alleges that the law violates the First Amendment by prohibiting transgender and non-binary school employees from using the titles and pronouns “that express who they are” and treating them differently from their colleagues.
“Florida has stigmatised the plaintiffs, threatened their psychological well-being, upended the respect owed to them as educators and necessary for a safe workplace and functioning classroom, and jeopardised their careers and the well-being of their families. Florida’s law must yield to the Constitution and laws of the United States and must not be enforced,” the plaintiffs’ lawyers wrote in the 61-page complaint.
The reach of the law, the plaintiffs argue, is not limited to school campuses and “applies wherever, whenever, and however an employee interacts with students”.
Before signing the bill in May, DeSantis criticised the use of pronouns in schools.
“We’ve never done this in all of human history until, what, two weeks ago? Now this is something, they’re having third graders explain pronouns? We’re not having the pronoun Olympics in Florida. It’s not happening here,” DeSantis said.
But the lawsuit argues that DeSantis and his allies enacted the measures “at least in part because of, not merely in spite of, the adverse effects they would have – both individually and in the aggregate – on LGBTQ+ people, particularly transgender and non-binary people, in various aspects of life.”
DeSantis’ office and the Department of Education did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.
The law targeted in the case also included an expansion of a controversial 2022 measure, dubbed “don’t say gay” by critics, that restricted instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in schools. The 2023 law also backed another controversial 2022 law that increased scrutiny of teaching materials and books in school libraries.
The new case only challenges the part of the law that restricts the use of titles and pronouns.
Under that part of the law, school principals could lose their salaries for a year if they receive complaints about potential violations and do not report them to the Department of Education.
Misgendering a person by using the wrong pronouns or titles “can cause that person mental distress and feelings of stigma”. So can prohibiting a person from using titles and pronouns that express that person’s gender identity,” the plaintiffs’ lawyers wrote.
Wood, who has worked as a teacher in Hillsborough County since 2021, transitioned as a woman around 2020, legally changed her name and lives as a woman, the lawsuit says. The state issued a teaching certificate in her legal name, Katie Wood. According to the lawsuit, district officials were initially “supportive of her transgender status and her female gender identity and expression”.
Since the law went into effect, Wood’s school principal and the county school board told her she could no longer be called “Ms” because “her gender is considered male”. The officials told Wood she could use the titles “Mr”, “teacher” or “coach”.
“Using titles like Mr and pronouns like he and him would cause Ms Wood harm, including emotional harm, risk of physical harm from others, and disruption to her classroom and ability to do her job. Avoiding titles and pronouns altogether would be impractical, disruptive, and stigmatising,” the lawsuit says.
Wood has adopted the title ‘teacher’, but the lawsuit alleges that the title has negatively affected her ability to teach and is a distraction to students.
The three teachers have also filed discrimination complaints with federal labour officials.