Politics- DeSantis signed three anti-trans bills into law ahead of an anticipated 2024 run.
- The laws limit LGBTQ+ schools curriculum and transgender care for minors.
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signed four bills into law Wednesday that will deeply disrupt the lives of transgender people in the state, whether it be over access to healthcare, bathroom use, lessons about LGBTQ+ topics, or pronouns in schools.
DeSantis held a press conference behind a lectern that read "Let Kids Be Kids." Though he decried LGBTQ+ material and called for "normalcy" for minors, children stood next to him onstage during the bills' signings. He uncharacteristically did not take questions from the media afterwards.
The actions add to DeSantis' already robust anti-LGBTQ+ portfolio at a time when he's widely expected to announce that he'll run for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.
The contest would pit him against former President Donald Trump, the GOP frontrunner who legislated against transgender people during his time in office, including through a ban on military service.
One of the new laws criminalizes instances in which people use bathrooms that don't match the gender they were assigned at birth. Lawmakers scaled back the original bill to exclude businesses and healthcare facilities, but it still extends to public schools, universities, parks, prisons, and other government buildings.
The legislation's language says it's intended to "maintain public safety, decency, decorum, and privacy," but the LGBTQ+ rights organization Equality Florida called the new law "bigoted" in a statement and said it was part of DeSantis' "Slate of Hate."
"Our state government should be focused on solving pressing issues, not terrorizing people who are simply trying to use the restroom and exist in public," Jon Harris Maurer, Equality Florida Public Policy Director, said.
Another bill DeSantis signed into law Wednesday prevents doctors from offering treatments such as hormone therapy, puberty blockers, and surgery — such as breast removal — to transgender minors, even in cases where parents consent. It also allows Florida courts to interfere when minors seek treatment outside Florida and obligates doctors to share certain state-sanctioned material with adults receiving transgender healthcare.
Last week DeSantis also signed a measure into law that allows healthcare providers and health insurance companies to refuse care on "religious, moral, or ethical" grounds — exemptions that are expected to disproportionately affect transgender people seeking care.
DeSantis has on numerous occasions targeted the LGBTQ+ community in his time as governor. In March, the DeSantis administration began the process of revoking the Hyatt Regency Miami's alcohol license after one of its facilities hosted "A Drag Queen Christmas" with minors present in the audience.
In what was widely viewed as doubling down on those actions, DeSantis signed a third measure into law Wednesday that blocks venues from allowing minors to watch "adult live performances" even when accompanied by a guardian.
It's not clear what effect the new laws will have on business in Florida due to corporate backlash. When North Carolina passed its 2016 so-called "bathroom bill" the Associated Press found that it would cost the state $3.76 billion in lost business over a dozen years.
Protesters gathered outside the governor's office in early May to object to DeSantis' governing style and policies. Equality Florida said it would consider ways to challenge the bathroom bill. Florida's pending budget increased legal expenses for the DeSantis administration to $10 million, a $6 million increase from the previous year.
Joe Saunders, senior policy director at Equality Florida, warned in a press conference Wednesday that with a DeSantis 2024 announcement being imminent "the nation should be on high alert," warning the governor would "export" his policies nationwide if elected.
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DeSantis has defended his actions as protective of children, invoking his own biography as a father to three children ages 6 and under. In early May, he specifically pushed back on criticism regarding the ban on transgender healthcare for minors. The care is supported as medically necessary by the American Medical Association, the nation's largest lobbying group for doctors.
DeSantis has dismissed such organizations as "ideological" and on Wednesday he called supporters of transgender care "rogue elements of the medical establishment" and accused them of wanting to "mutilate" young people.
During a book-tour stop in Charleston, South Carolina, last month, he defined affirming the identities of transgender people as "unmoored from truth."
"If we as a society say that a man that puts on a dress, dresses as a woman and then quote 'identifies' as a woman is actually a woman, that is not true, OK? If you're telling me to accept that is a woman you're asking me to be complicit in a lie, and that I will not do," he said.
'Don't Say Gay' expansion
One of the most high-profile instances of DeSantis' anti-LGBTQ+ agenda was a bill he signed into law last year that banned instruction about gender identity and sexual orientation in classrooms for up to third grade. The legislation — officially known as the Parental Rights in Education Act — was panned by LGBTQ+ rights organizations as "Don't Say Gay."
The backlash over the law included a widely watched dispute with Walt Disney World that's now in court.
DeSantis and his allies often pushed back against critics of the Parental Rights Act last year by stressing that it would only apply to the youngest students. This legislative session, however, they shredded that argument and expanded the law to higher grades.
The DeSantis administration already pushed the law further through rulemaking by limiting such topics to sex ed and instances "required by existing state standards" from third to twelfth grade.
But a bill DeSantis signed into law Wednesday went even further to eradicate such teachings so they only happen in the limited curriculum parameters after eighth grade.
In addition, the law says schools can't require teachers or students to use pronouns that don't align with a student's sex assigned at birth, and allows people to more easily object to books in school libraries.
Proponents of such restrictions have said that parents should be the ones to teach their children about sexual orientation and gender, and should have the right to decide what their children learn in the classroom.
"If a parent wants to engage in that with their kid in those, then that's up to them, but we should not be putting that in the curriculum in school," DeSantis said Wednesday.
Critics have said they're deeply worried about chilling the speech of LGBTQ teachers and parents, and about students being bullied or outed to families who don't accept them. Studies show that LGBTQ youth face higher rates of suicide compared to their cisgender or heterosexual peers.
"Imagine living in a state where you are the target of the political culture war," Democratic Sen. Shevrin Jones of Miami Gardens, who is gay, said in the chamber in early May as the bill was being debated.
Under the previous law, some schools already removed books exploring sexual orientation and gender identity from their libraries, though it's unclear for what grades. According to the governor's office, they have included the memoirs "Gender Queer," "This Book Is Gay," and "Flamer."
The organization PEN America, which advocates for freedom in literature, joined the publisher Penguin Random House, in filing a lawsuit Wednesay over the book removals.
Melanie Willingham-Jaggers, executive director at GLSEN, an organization that works to create LGBTQ+ inclusive schools, called the new laws "catastrophic" in a statement.
"He's using vulnerable communities as political pawns in an attempt to gain power and further his own career," Willingham-Jaggers said.
May 17, 2023: This story has been updated with comments from GLSEN and others made during a press conference with Equality Florida.