Today, Governor Ron DeSantis signed the ‘Let Kids Be Kids’ bill package to protect Florida’s children from permanent mutilating surgical procedures, gender identity politics in schools, and attending sexually explicit adult performances, according to the governor’s office.
“Florida is proud to lead the way in standing up for our children,” said Governor Ron DeSantis. “As the world goes mad, Florida represents a refuge of sanity and a citadel of normalcy.”
HB 1521 ensures that Florida’s bathrooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms are safe places for women. The bill requires educational institutions, detention facilities, correctional institutions, juvenile correctional facilities, and public buildings with a restroom or changing facility to designate separate facilities based on biological sex or to provide one-person unisex facilities.
“A woman should not be in a locker room, having to worry about someone from the opposite sex being in their locker room, and it’s happened with athletics with our girl athletes, and women athletes also,” DeSantis said Wednesday. “With some of these other things, whether it’s a prison situation, whether it’s just these restrooms, you know, we want to make sure that our girls and our women are protected, so this bill does that, and makes sure that they’re not going to be exposed.”
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HB 1069 protects students from having to declare their pronouns in school. This bill also expands parental rights in education by prohibiting classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in Pre-K through 8th grade.
HB 1438 protects children from sexually explicit performances in all venues. This bill prohibits a person from knowingly admitting a minor to an adult performance.
Additionally, this legislation authorizes the Department of Business and Professional Regulation to fine, suspend, or revoke the operating or alcohol licenses of hotels or restaurants if they admit a child into an adult performance.
“Thank you, Governor DeSantis, for signing legislation that protects our children,” said Agency for Health Care Administration Secretary Jason Weida. “Florida is following the science to elevate our standards of care to protect kids from harmful drugs and surgeries.”
SB 254 – Treatments for Sex Reassignment:
- Prohibits sex reassignment surgeries and experimental puberty blockers for children.
- Requires adult patients who are receiving these medications or surgeries to be informed about the dangers and irreversible nature of these procedures and to give written, informed consent.
- Provides courts temporary emergency jurisdiction to step in and halt sex reassignment procedures for out-of-state children present in Florida.
- Creates a pathway for individuals to obtain damages when they were injured or killed after receiving sex reassignment surgeries or medications as minors.
The Governor also signed legislation to protect youth sports in Florida and ensure that all students can play sports without interference from extremist bureaucratic boards. HB 225 allows private school, virtual school, and home school students to participate in sports and other extracurricular activities at other public or private schools, regardless of zip code.
HB 225 also reorganizes the FHSAA Board of Directors to 13 members, instead of the current 16 members.
Four members will be elected by school representative members while eight members will be appointed by the governor, and the final member will be the Commissioner of Education or his designee. This bill also allows teams to provide brief opening remarks, including prayers, before high school athletic contests.
“It (the bill) also preserves the first amendment right to speech, including public prayer. At the beginning of high school, sporting events. How do we get into a situation where you’re going to hear from the school about not allowing prayer before a game? The athletic association somehow put the kibosh on,” said DeSantis.
“I’m sorry, you have a right to free expression of religion. If government is denying your right to say a prayer before the game, they are infringing your speech; you’re not violating anything by doing that, and so for them to do it is discriminatory, so we’re making sure. The idea that we would have to litigate this and court is really, really unbelievable,” DeSantis said.
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A federal appeals court will hear arguments in June in a battle about whether the Tampa Christian school that Governor DeSantis spoke at on Wednesday, should have been allowed to offer a prayer over a stadium loudspeaker before a 2015 high-school football championship game.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has scheduled arguments the week of June 26 in Jacksonville.
The court initially scheduled the arguments the week of May 1 but removed that hearing from its calendar last week.
A court docket did not give an exact date for the June arguments. Cambridge Christian School went to the Atlanta-based appeals court last year after U.S. District Judge Charlene Edwards Honeywell backed a decision by the Florida High School Athletic Association to prevent a prayer over the loudspeaker.
Honeywell ruled that the association is a “state actor” and did not violate First Amendment rights in denying the prayer. But attorneys for Cambridge Christian contend that the association violated speech rights.
“FHSAA (the association) claims that all speech over the loudspeaker is government speech,” attorneys for the school wrote in a brief filed at the appeals court. “Yet the record shows that FHSAA permits schools and other private actors to deliver a variety of messages over the loudspeaker: welcoming remarks, promotions, music, and even prayers (at all games except the championship). Moreover, FHSAA uses the loudspeaker to call for moments of silence, deliver ethical messages, promote sportsmanship, and honor persons and events. But it will not allow these same themes to be expressed under a religious banner.”
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