Florida public employees may no longer have to use people's preferred pronouns. What that means for workplaces.
A bill that would prohibit public-sector employees and contractors from being required to use people's preferred pronouns passed its first Senate committee Monday.
Known as the Freedom of Conscience in the Workplace Act, the bill (SB 1642) would prevent "adverse personnel action" from being taken against any employee of a public-sector organization or contractor who opted not to use a preferred pronoun based on their own "sincerely held religious, moral, conscious-based or biology-based beliefs," said Republican Sen. Stan McClain, R- Ocala, who sponsored it.
The bill, which passed with a 6-3 vote, also would require that job applications and other similar employment forms include only two genders and no nonbinary option.
"This is an extension of the 2023 Parental Rights in Education Act," McClain said. "We put some of these same requirements on our students and employees of our school districts, and this is an extension of that to our public employees."
The bill was introduced after a county employee was fired after he wrote an anti-LGBTQ+ article
The bill was inspired by an experience by John Labriola, a former communications specialist for the Miami-Dade County Commission. It fired him after a now-defunct newsletter published in 2021 an anti-gay, anti-transgender article he wrote.
"Because the state does not have a policy prohibiting the discrimination against employees who disagree with gender ideology, there was no grounds for my being able to contest my firing," Labriola, now a lobbyist for the Christian Family Coalition Florida, told the committee. "This bill targets nobody. It simply ensures that government employment is not conditioned on compelled speech…. The bill allows individuals to use whatever pronouns that they want. It even allows other employees to use these pronouns if they wish. What it prohibits is for employers to compel them to use these particular pronouns on the job."
Opponents of the bill argue that there are more complexities to the first amendment argument
Opponents said it's not that simple, however. "You don't have first amendment rights to say whatever you want in the workplace without ramifications," said Sen. Tina Scott Polsky, D- Boca Raton. "You can't tell racist jokes and make someone feel uncomfortable without hopefully an employer giving you corrective action or firing you. So why should it apply to jokes about sexual orientation or refusal to use a pronoun that someone prefers?"
Dean Trantalis, the first openly gay mayor of Fort Lauderdale, called the bill's topic "tiresome," adding that there are more pressing concerns to deal with, such as homelessness, affordability and access to health care insurance. "There are real issues that we should address, and this is not one of them," he said.
Proponents of the bill cited First Amendment rights in their arguments. Aaron DiPietro, legislative director at Florida Family Voice, said that just as free speech protects someone's ability to express themselves without fear of punishment, it also protects against feeling forced to say something that goes against one's beliefs.
"This legislation simply makes a case in state law that government contractors, government entities, as well as nonprofits that receive taxpayer dollars are prohibited from enforcing their membership and conditioning employment based on whether they are forced to defend a particular ideology," DiPietro said.
Isabella Rodriguez, Florida elections director at Citizens Defending Freedom, said religion is also a protected class. "As a Christian, I believe that there are two genders," she said. "I go to work to do my job. I don't go to work to affirm your existence, whether that be gender or any other case for that matter. SB 1642 would make it where my speech is protected. I shouldn't be forced by a government entity to accept something that goes against my faith and against my good conscience."
The bill must still clear the Judiciary and Rules committees before being heard by the full Senate. A similar House bill has yet to be heard in committee.