Chalkbeat utilized the expertise of UW–Madison’s Suzanne Eckes recently in an article reporting on a settlement agreement that clarifies the terms of what’s commonly known as Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law, which restricts classroom instruction related to sexuality and gender identity in Florida public schools.
The settlement ensures that Florida teachers can, for instance, place a photo of their same-sex spouse on their desk, and school libraries can include books featuring LGBTQ characters, notes the article. The agreement also requires the Florida Department of Education to disseminate guidance about the law to all 67 Florida school districts.
Eckes, the Susan S. Engeleiter Professor of Education Law, Policy, and Practice in the School of Education’s Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis, explains in the article that Florida’s law and others that are “vague and broad potentially violate federal laws and protections.”
The article notes: “As employees, teachers have limited free speech rights in the classroom, but states cannot discriminate against them on the basis of sex, which forms the basis of many legal protections for LGBTQ people. For example, they can’t penalize a teacher for having a picture of a same-sex spouse on their desk while allowing a colleague to have a picture of her husband. The federal Equal Access Act says that schools can’t limit extracurricular clubs based on their content. Bible study groups, future homemakers, and gay-straight alliance clubs all have the right to meet in school, Eckes (says).”
Eckes adds that “the settlement suggests the challengers had viable claims on equal protection grounds, even as the state maintains the right to regulate curriculum and prevent teachers from offering personal opinions to a captive audience.”
“While the settlement creates no legal precedent, it could encourage some school district lawyers, even in other states, to reach less restrictive interpretations of their states’ laws. At the same time, even in Florida, there may be disagreements about what exactly constitutes instruction.”
“If a teacher does give an opinion in class, there is this overall idea that teacher speech can be curtailed,” Eckes says. “That is a grayer area than banning the gay-straight alliance or pulling all the books off the shelves due to your own ideology.”
To learn more, check out the full article in Chalkbeat.