GOP bill targets personal pronouns at Florida government workplaces

By Jim Saunders

On November 21, 2023

TALLAHASSEE — In what could fuel a new round of legislative battles about gender identity, a House Republican on Tuesday filed a bill that would place restrictions on government workplace use of personal pronouns.

The bill (HB 599), filed by Rep. Ryan Chamberlin, R-Belleview, for the 2024 legislative session that begins in January, also would prohibit training about issues involving sexual orientation and gender identity.

It would prevent state and local government agencies from requiring employees and contractors to refer to other people “using that person’s preferred personal title or pronouns if such personal title or pronouns do not correspond to that person’s sex” as determined at birth.

Also, the bill would prevent employees of government agencies and contractors from providing to their employers preferred pronouns that “do not correspond to his or her sex” and would prevent employers from asking workers to provide personal pronouns.

Employees or contractors could pursue violations through complaints to the Florida Commission on Human Relations.

Along with the personal-pronouns issue, the bill would prevent non-profit organizations or employers that get money from the state from requiring workers to take part in “training, instruction or other activity on sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.”

Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, immediately blasted the proposal Tuesday, calling it “highly unconstitutional” and saying it would apply to non-profit organizations such as the LGBTQ-advocacy group Equality Florida.

“Florida Republicans just filed legislation that would essentially ban gender pronouns in PRIVATE businesses and prohibit training about pronouns in nonprofits too,” Eskamani wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “Would basically ban @equalityfl from existing.”

Mirroring parts of a law that the Republican-controlled Legislature passed this spring about gender-identity issues in the education system, the bill says it is “the policy of the state 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.”

Republican lawmakers and Gov. Ron DeSantis have approved a series of controversial laws in recent years targeting issues about gender identity and sexual orientation in schools and health care.

This piece was republished from the Orlando Sentinel.