Speaking at a Christian school in Tampa that filed a lawsuit to be able to pray before sporting events, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a series of bills Wednesday, including two of the most controversial of the 2023 legislative session.
One of the bills (SB 254) prevents doctors from offering treatments such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy to transgender minors and the other (HB 1069) expands a law that restricts instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity in schools.
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“I feel very strongly as governor, but also just as a dad of a 6-, a 5- and a 3-year-old that we need to let our kids just be kids. We have a very crazy age that we live in,” DeSantis said during Wednesday’s news conference.
DeSantis also signed HB 225 on Wednesday, which allows teams to provide brief opening remarks, including prayers, before high school athletic contests. The bill allows private school, virtual school and home school students to participate in sports and other extracurricular activities at other public or private schools, regardless of ZIP code.
It also reorganizes the FHSAA Board of Directors to 13 members, instead of the current 16 members. Four members will be elected by school representative members while eight members will be appointed by the governor, and the final member will be the Commissioner of Education or his designee.
The other four bills DeSantis signed targeting LGBTQ children and adults were at the top of the governor’s legislative wish list and dominated much of the 2023 legislative session that ended earlier this month.
LGBTQ advocates decried the series of bills as a “slate of hate.”
At the DeSantis administration’s urging, the state Board of Medicine and the state Board of Osteopathic Medicine approved rules that prevent doctors from providing puberty blockers, hormone therapy and certain surgical procedures to transgender minors.
DeSantis called such treatments “child mutilation” before signing SB 254 into law on Wednesday.
“We cannot speak something into existence that doesn’t exist. We cannot change our sex,” House co-sponsor Ralph Massullo, a Lecanto Republican who is a dermatologist, said. “And for those children that this bill addresses, they cannot change their sex, and they need to learn that fact.”
But Rep. Kelly Skidmore, D-Boca Raton, said the bill “puts people in danger of not being able to get the care they need.” She also said lawmakers should not interfere with decisions made by physicians and patients.
“We are not the end-all and the be-all when it comes to private, personal health-care decisions,” Skidmore said.
The issue centers, at least in part, on treatment for gender dysphoria, which the federal government defines clinically as “significant distress that a person may feel when sex or gender assigned at birth is not the same as their identity,”
The bill took effect immediately upon DeSantis’ signature.
The Republican-controlled Legislature also passed the expansion of a 2022 law that barred instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade. HB 1069 broadens the prohibition to pre-kindergarten through eighth grade.
Also, teachers and other school employees would be prohibited from telling students their preferred pronouns and would be barred from asking students about their preferred pronouns.
Supporters titled the 2022 law “Parental Rights in Education,” but opponents dubbed it the “don’t say gay” bill.
In another bill aimed at transgender people, DeSantis signed HB 1521, which requires people to use bathrooms that line up with their sex assigned at birth.
Democrats fought the bill, arguing it would subject transgender people to harassment and questioning how it would be enforced.
The bill also requires educational institutions, detention facilities, correctional institutions, juvenile correctional facilities, and public buildings with a restroom or changing facility to designate separate facilities based on biological sex or to provide one-person unisex facilities.
The proposal is aimed at “ensuring women’s safety,” DeSantis said Wednesday. “A woman should not be in a locker room having to worry about someone from the opposite sex being in their locker room.”
Under the bill, people who enter bathrooms designated for the “opposite sex” could face trespassing charges. The bill includes exceptions for situations involving bathroom use by children under age 12, seniors and people with developmental disabilities.
Jennifer Solomon, the mother of a transgender student, called the LGBTQ-focused measures “extremely scary.”
“We have families that are leaving the state because they cannot properly parent their child,” Solomon, the president of PFLAG Miami, said.
DeSantis is “literally taking away safety from our children,” she added.
“Gender-affirming care saves lives. We know that. I don’t want a politician to tell me what health care looks like for my family,” Solomon said. “I don’t want to leave the state … but unfortunately, if this continues, good families like mine are going to be forced to leave the state and that’s unacceptable.”
Another bill (HB 1438), which also went into effect immediately, prohibits a person from knowingly admitting a minor to an adult performance and authorizes the Department of Business and Professional Regulation to fine, suspend, or revoke the operating or alcohol licenses of hotels or restaurants if they admit a child into an adult performance.
While the bill doesn’t specifically mention drag shows, it came after DeSantis’ administration took steps such as filing a complaint against the Hyatt Regency Miami hotel for hosting a “Drag Queen Christmas” event in December.
“This is sad that you kind of have to do this,” DeSantis said Wednesday. “People can do what they want with some of that, but to have minors there … where you have these like really explicit shows, that is just inappropriate.”
Joe Saunders, political director of the LGBTQ advocacy group Equality Florida, called the package of proposals passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature and signed by DeSantis the largest slate of anti-LGBTQ bills in the state’s history.
The breadth of the measures has spawned fear in the LGBTQ community at the same time it is galvanizing activists to push back against what many view as a revival of decades-old persecution of trans and gay people.
“These actions will fan the flames of hatred and bigotry and homophobia and transphobia in our state. Many in the community, I think, are really struggling to comprehend what it will mean but we know those impacts, those harms, will be real and, we fear, tragic,” Nathan Bruemmer, a transgender man who is the president of the LGBTQ Democratic Caucus, said.
Equality Florida CEO Nadine Smith accused DeSantis and Florida GOP lawmakers of “trying to drag Florida backwards in a way that should be setting off alarm bells across the country.” Smith noted that her organization last month issued a travel advisory warning about the risks posed to people considering visiting or relocating to the state.
“This backlash will not stand. We are awake. We will make sure every family is respected and every child is protected. Florida is the frontline in this fight against fascism, and we are the resistance,” Smith said.
The reach of the Florida proposals also drew rebukes from national LGBTQ advocacy groups.
“DeSantis has made clear that demonizing LGBTQ+ people will be the center of his legislative agenda and presidential run. As a result, the rights of millions of Floridians are being rolled back by politicians who are attacking the LGBTQ+ community at a breakneck pace to pander to the most extreme fringes of their base,” Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson said in a statement.
But DeSantis, the father of three young children, hailed the proposals he signed Wednesday as “an incredible package” of bills.
“I think this is something that we just made the decision as a state and me as governor to just say we’re protecting kids. We’re protecting kids. And we’re going to protect kids when it’s popular. We’ll protect kids, even when you take some incoming as a result of maybe offending some ideologies or some agendas out there, but that’s fine,” he said.