A U.S. district judge said Aug. 13 that a 2023 Florida law restricting pronouns that transgender teachers can use to identify themselves violates a federal civil rights law.
U.S. District Judge Mark Walker decision comes a month after 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals shot down Walker’s preliminary injunction, in which he ruled that Hillsborough County teacher Katie Wood’s right to free speech was infringed. A Lee County teacher, identified as Jane Doe, was also involved in the case.
Wood is a transgender woman who taught algebra at Lennard High School in Ruskin. She filed the lawsuit in December 2023 with two other teachers, contending the new state law under the First Amendment, the Civil Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause.
Walker sides with the teachers in finding the state law discriminates in violation of what is known as Section VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That section bars employment discrimination because of a person’s “race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.”
The Florida law requires teachers to use pronouns that align with their sex assigned at birth.
Walker wrote that the state law “alters the terms and conditions of plaintiffs’ employment. Compliance … means plaintiffs, transgender teachers, are forbidden from using their preferred pronouns and titles with students. Noncompliance can result in disciplinary violations, which in turn can lead to suspension or revocation of plaintiffs’ teaching certifications or termination.”
However, the outcome of the pronoun law challenge might hinge on an appeals court ruling in a Georgia case, known as Lange v. Houston County.
Walker wrote that the outcome of the Georgia case, which involves an alleged Title VII violation against a transgender employee of a sheriff’s office, could be “determinative” in the Florida teacher case.
