Rights Behind the Headlines is a blog series from the ACLU of Florida that dispels misinformation and gives Floridians critical information about the most pressing issues facing our state. Read the full series at aclufl.org/rightsbehindtheheadlines.

We’re dispelling Gov. DeSantis’ claim that new laws that attack diversity and free speech in education “encourage diversity of thought, civil discourse, and the pursuit of truth for generations to come.”

Gov. DeSantis’ administration is continuing its attempts to dictate what ideas and history students can learn about in school. Right now, it’s stoking a one-sided culture war  in an attempt to justify expanding government control over campus conversations at the expense of our First Amendment rights to learn and freely share ideas.

We’ve previously covered the unconstitutional Stop W.O.K.E. Act (H.B. 7), which targeted primary school students. A federal judge called the bill “positively dystopian” in a November ruling in favor of the Florida students and educators suing the governor. Despite this, the governor ramped up his positively dystopian education agenda in 2023, first by removing an AP African American Studies course in January, saying that the course “lacks educational value” and pushes a “political agenda.”

Gov. DeSantis said a lesson on queer theory was not an important part of the course. To correct the record, Brandi Waters, AP African American Studies' senior director, told USA TODAY that the intention of the course was to teach students “a diversity of lived [experiences].” This included a section on various movements and debates throughout Black American history, including “the Civil Rights Movement, housing discrimination against Black Americans, the Black Power Movement, feminist movements and ‘diversity within Black communities.’”

Queer Black Americans are as inseparable from Black history as Harriet Tubman and Martin Luther King, Jr. Prominent LGBTQ+ Black Americans like James Baldwin, Marsha P. Johnson, and Audre Lorde were thought leaders, authors, and activists whose musings on civil rights, feminism, and the LGBTQ+ experience are behind significant cultural shifts that radically changed the face of American society today.

It is no more inappropriate to talk about their lived experiences than it would be to discuss, say, LGBTQ+ victims of the Holocaust who were persecuted and sent to death camps by the Nazi regime.

In May, however, Gov. DeSantis signed Senate Bill 266. This new law puts critical faculty decisions, including hiring and review of tenure, in the hands of political appointees. The law also forbids colleges and universities from spending money on activities, speakers, events, and clubs that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Because the language is so vague and broad, the law threatens historically Black sororities and fraternities, as well as DEI groups such as veterans’ services and student religious groups.

The governor signed this latest anti-free speech bill at New College of Florida, which is being treated as an incubator for the governor’s ideological playground. Disturbing stories from the school highlight personal financial gain, racist decisions overruling student input, and retaliation. The changes implemented at New College are a cautionary tale of how stoking a one-sided culture war in support of a single political ideology tramples on free expression and the ability to actually teach and learn in a classroom.

The First Amendment right to learn, to teach, to express does not end at the classroom door. It is not dictated by a governor, a state legislature, or political appointees. Florida’s education system is not a forum for the government to exercise unilateral ideological control out of fear or disgust for American history that includes the treatment of and contributions of marginalized people.

As queer Black civil rights activist James Baldwin once said, “It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.”

Rights Behind the Headlines is a blog series from the ACLU of Florida that dispels misinformation and gives Floridians critical information about the most pressing issues facing our state. Read the full series at aclufl.org/rightsbehindtheheadlines. 

We’re addressing the impacts of Gov. DeSantis’ assaults on the voting rights of Black Floridians during his term as Florida’s governor.

Why does Ron DeSantis work against Black people? A better question, perhaps, is how he has done it.

Ron DeSantis has systematically made it more difficult for Black Floridians to participate in their government since he was inaugurated the 46th Governor of Florida on January 8, 2019.

DeSantis did this, first, by dismantling Florida’s Voting Restoration Amendment (Amd 4).

The dismantling of Amendment 4 was primarily facilitated by the re-criminalization of the same people with past felony convictions that Amendment 4 was intended to help, with Gov. DeSantis’ implementation of Senate Bill 7066 creating a pay-to-vote system in 2019. Since then, the governor created an elections police force in 2022, arresting several people who believed they were eligible to vote for supposed election crimes, despite a lack of any indication that the individuals intended to violate any law.

This election police did succeed in chilling people who paid their debt to society from participating in their own government.

The ACLU of Florida along with other organizations has litigated against the state for its deceptive practices that effectively bar people with past convictions from voting, an affront to Florida voters who chose to restore the franchise to them.

Gov. DeSantis further reduced the power of Black Floridians’ voices in Congress by his usurping of the state’s 2020 redistricting process, during which he single-handedly dismantled a North Florida Congressional district intended for Black voter access, a district originally drawn to comply with the 2010 Fair Districts Amendment to the state’s constitution.

The district in question, then represented by regional native Al Lawson, was also drawn in a region of the state that is home to many of the Black descendants of Florida’s former slave population.

Following the 2020 census, the ACLU of Florida has litigated or otherwise sought to address racial gerrymandering practices in numerous municipalities across the state. Most recently our work was successful in getting the Jacksonville City Council to accept newly drawn district maps that fairly represent the city's Black population.

The governor has also censored anti-racist perspectives of American history in Florida’s K-12 social studies curriculum, namely with his so-called “Stop W.O.K.E.” law. A proposed expansion of the law to Florida public colleges and universities is being challenged by the ACLU among others for violating the free speech and equal protection of the First and 14th Amendments for students and educators alike.

Time and time again over the last four and half years of the tenure of Gov. Ron DeSantis, he has demonstrated indifference to improving the lives of not just Black Floridians, but the well-being of all Floridians.

We deserve better.

“My mom and I wanted to fight this law not just to protect my health care, but also to ensure that transgender people like me can safely and fully live our truths,” said Dylan Brandt, one of our transgender youth clients in our challenge against Arkansas’ ban on gender-affirming health care. “Transgender kids across the country are having their own futures threatened by laws like this one, and it’s up to all of us to speak out, fight back, and give them hope.”

As we wrap up Pride month, hope is what we at the ACLU have for the fight for trans rights. While we can be clear about the threats in front of us — from further restrictions on the rights of trans youth to increasing efforts to target the health care of trans adults — a string of early legal victories are highlighting how the ACLU, our nationwide affiliate network, and our allies across the LGBTQ rights movement are not only fighting back, but winning.

After a historic two-week trial in Little Rock last fall, a federal judge last week overturned the nation’s first categorical ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth, finding the 2021 Arkansas law violated the rights of transgender youth under the Equal Protection Clause, their parents under the Due Process Clause, and the First Amendment rights of their medical providers.

“The evidence showed that the prohibited medical care improves the mental health and well-being of patients and that by prohibiting it,” wrote Judge James Moody, “the state undermined the interests it claims to be advancing.”

The critical victory comes as judges are unanimously blocking similar bills passed in other states, finding legal challenges against them likely to succeed on the merits. In challenges brought by the ACLU and our nationwide affiliate network, courts in Indiana, Tennessee, and Kentucky have blocked bans in those states, finding them openly discriminatory, unconstitutional, and dangerous to the very youth they claim to protect.

Judges in Alabama and Florida have blocked enforcement of bans targeting trans youth there, with the latter declaring “gender identity is real,” and denouncing the state for refusing to listen to parents of trans youth. In Oklahoma, we’ve secured a binding non-enforcement agreement with the state’s attorney general, preserving the legality of gender-affirming care in the Sooner State until the court can address our motion to bar enforcement of the law prior to trial.

Judges have also turned a harsh eye towards restrictions on drag performances, a new category of anti-LGBTQ bill harkening back to the cross-dressing laws the ACLU defeated decades ago. In a case brought by the ACLU and the ACLU of Utah, we successfully prevented officials in St. George, Utah from prohibiting drag performances from Southern Utah Drag Stars. Legislation targeting drag shows in Tennessee and Florida have likewise been blocked in private legal challenges brought by venues threatened by this unconstitutional restriction on their speech.

And we’re far from done. Well before their bans on gender-affirming care are set to take effect, we’re getting ready for hearings against laws passed this year in Idaho and Montana. In Texas, we’ll soon be joining a coalition of organizations challenging that state’s ban targeting the health care of tens of thousands of trans youth across the state — the largest population targeted by these laws yet.

American Civil Liberties Union

Mapping Attacks on LGBTQ Rights in U.S. State Legislatures

The ACLU is tracking attacks on LGBTQ rights and working with our national network of affiliates to support LGBTQ people everywhere.

Amid an onslaught of legislative attacks targeting their safety, their dignity, and their health care, transgender people are reasonably fearful about the direction of the country’s politics. While trans people were never collectively doing great — enduring higher rates of poverty, homelessness, violence, and suicide — the concerted effort by extremists across state and federal governments to turn us into political scapegoats has only added to the dehumanization many of us face across our lives.

Last year, we told you that hope was most necessary when it’s the hardest to muster, that the light of your joy burns brightest in the dark. While we recognize these legal victories are the earliest stages of a years-long effort to protect the rights of transgender people, they offer vital signs of hope for transgender people, our families, and our allies that the just world we all deserve is not only possible — it’s well within our reach.