Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) secured a crucial win in court.
A federal judge has tossed out a lawsuit against the Florida governor and other administration officials in response to the Parental Rights in Education law, commonly referred to as “Don't Say Gay” by critics.
On Tuesday, Judge Allen Winsor struck down the suit filed by LGBTQ+ advocacy groups Equality Florida and Family Equality along with students and educators saying the plaintiffs lacked legal standing to proceed but neglected to assess the constitutionality of the case.
The tossed lawsuit alleged the controversial Florida legislation violated the First Amendment, due-process rights, and Title IX. The lawsuit was first filed by the advocacy groups in March but was revised later.
“The principal problem is that most of plaintiffs' alleged harm is not plausibly tied to the law's enforcement so much as the law's very existence,” Winsor's dismissal read, according to Fox News.
“Plaintiffs contend the law's passage, the sentiment behind it, the legislators' motivation, and the message the law conveys all cause them harm. But no injunction can unwind any of that.”
The judge also noted in his dismissal that the groups admitted to experiencing the consequences of the law before it went into effect, rendering the plaintiff's accusations moot.
“Plaintiffs' complaint is replete with allegations showing their asserted injuries flowed from something other than the law's enforcement. Indeed, they allege that the law's ‘harmful effects' were ‘already manifest' even before the law became effective—before, that is, it even could be enforced,” the dismissal read.
“It should be obvious that harms predating a statute's enforcement were not caused by the statute's enforcement. And it should be equally obvious that an injunction precluding a statute's enforcement would not stop harms the statute's enforcement never caused in the first place.”
DeSantis signed HB 1557 into law in March, saying, “Today, I signed HB 1557, the Parental Rights in Education Act, into law. It ensures parents can send their kids to kindergarten without gender ideology being injected into instruction and they will be notified and have the right to decline healthcare services offered at schools.”
Critics of the bill, which bans gender identity and sexual orientation education for Kindergarten through third grade, sought to misrepresent the legislation as a blanket attempt to ban discussion of gender ideology in public schools.
However, proponents of the bill have labeled HB 1557 as a “common sense” practice for educators of young schoolchildren.
“I mean, obviously. This law is common sense. That's why democrats and media activists (but I repeat myself) had to lie about it and push straight up propaganda like ‘Don't Say Gay' to create the illusion of controversy,” DeSantis Rapid Response Director Christina Pushaw tweeted over the summer.
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Most people want to preserve the innocence of children. Students in K – 3 have enough to deal with learning basic education, social skills (like sharing) and fitting into a group where they are no longer the center of attention. Gender identity wouldn’t be relevant subject matter.
The children in k-3 do not need sex education of any kind. They are to young and their minds don’t perceive what it is those perverts are teaching. That is part of the indoctrination the left is trying to take over their minds…. Let them be children. They will learn about sex on their on at their on speed. Their parents will decide what and when to teach them about sex.