Hundreds of Students Rally at the Capitol as House Passes Don’t Say LGBTQ Expansion

Hundreds of Students Rally at the Capitol as House Passes Don’t Say LGBTQ Expansion

TALLAHASSEE, FL -- On International Transgender Day of Visibility, hundreds of students from across the state descended on the Capitol to protest the legislature’s fast-tracking of Governor DeSantis’ agenda of book banning and classroom censorship and assaults on academic and medical freedom. Buses arrived from South and Central Florida in a collaboration between high school, college and university students called the Student Unity Coalition. Organizers marched the coalition from Florida State University campus into the halls of the Capitol building just as the House of Representatives voted 77-35 in favor of HB 1069, which would expand the Don’t Say LGBTQ law’s censorship provisions through 8th grade, ban parents from requiring the school system use their child’s correct pronouns, and escalating book bans, allowing one person from anywhere in the country to challenge a book in a Florida school, prompting its immediate removal pending a lengthy review.

“The students who mobilized in the hundreds today sent a clear message about the Florida they want to grow up in,” said Joe Saunders, Equality Florida Senior Political Director. “They want a Florida that values freedom -- real freedom. Free states don’t ban books. Free states don’t censor LGBTQ people from society or strip parents of their right to ensure their child is respected in school. Students and families across Florida are fed up with this governor’s agenda that has put a target on the backs of LGBTQ people. Shame on DeSantis’ legislative cronies for peddling more anti-LGBTQ lies on the House floor today and ramming through an expansion of the censorship policies that have emptied bookshelves across the state and wreaked havoc on our schools. Shame on them for ignoring the voices outside demanding a state that respects all families and protects all students.”

House passage of HB 1069 comes as last year’s Don’t Say LGBTQ law wreaks havoc on Florida’s schools and drives educators and families from the state. DeSantis’ Florida has become synonymous with the sweeping book bans that are targeting books with LBGTQ characters or Black history themes, including The Life of Rosa Parks and And Tango Makes Three. Students’ graduation speeches have been censored. Rainbow Safe Space stickers have been peeled from classroom windows. Districts have canceled long standing after school events and refused to recognize LGBTQ History Month. The rampant right wing censorship has exacerbated Florida’s exodus of educators, with vacant teacher positions ballooning to over 8,000, and, according to a recent survey from the Williams Institute, has led a majority of LGBTQ parents in the state to consider leaving Florida altogether.

On Thursday, parents and educators held a joint press conference outside the House chamber to decry this legislation and other proposals that would strip them, their students, and their families of the rights to academic and medical freedom. That same day, Republicans lawmakers rejected numerous reasonable amendments to HB 1069, including a Parental Rights amendment by Representative Rita Harris that would have allowed parents to write a letter instructing schools on what pronouns their child should be addressed with, a clarifying amendment from Representative Gantt that would have finally defined the term “classroom instruction,” which bill sponsor Representative Stan McClain acknowledged has been left undefined and vague, and a Marriage Equality amendment by Representative Michele Rayner-Goolsby that would have struck outdated and bigoted sex education language that mandates instruction on the benefits of “monogamous, heterosexual marriage.”

The over 150 high school and college students who rallied in Tallahassee filled the Capitol rotunda just before 1p, with their chants of “this is what democracy looks like” temporarily interrupting a disinformation-filled rant by GOP Representative, and sponsor of the bill to criminalize medical care for transgender youth, Ralph Massullo.

The Don’t Say LGBTQ Expansion bill’s Senate version, SB 1320, will move next to its final committee, Fiscal Policy.