Over the past four years, Florida has passed laws banning speech about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), along with “sensitive” or “divisive” topics like race, class, sex, gender, slavery, American history, colonialism, climate change, vaccines, and even grammar.
In fact Florida has banned so many words from its classrooms, libraries, and government offices that it’s becoming known as “the Banned Speech state.”
Trying to keep on the right side of its state’s proliferating speech bans, earlier this month Florida A&M University (abbreviated FAMU) told students in its College of Law that they couldn’t use the word “black” when promoting Black History Month. They’d have to abbreviate it as BHM instead, which is particularly bizarre since the school is a Historically Black College and University (abbreviated HBCU).
School authorities insisted that “black” was prohibited by the Florida law known as SB 266. Passed in 2023, SB 266 doesn’t actually ban specific words. Instead, it says that the state’s colleges and universities “may not expend any state or federal funds to promote, support, or maintain any programs or campus activities that . . . advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion, or promote or engage in political or social activism.”
With a statute this vague, staying legal means saying as little as possible. Freedom of speech in Florida – as in other “red” states – has come to mean, “You have the right to remain silent.”
FAMU insisted that its ban on “black” had nothing to do with speech suppression, since the school “encourages the free exchange of ideas [and] recognizes that freedom of expression is fundamental to academic inquiry, personal development, and civic engagement.”
But after an Orlando TV station broke the story, FAMU authorities promptly reversed course. Banning “black” had been a mistake, they said. It was an error by a staffer whose “overly-cautious interpretation . . . went beyond what the law requires,” they said.
Free speech advocates often argue that the best way to combat bad speech is with more speech. Sunlight, they claim, is the best disinfectant. Except in the Sunshine State, where with all its speech bans, trying to make Black History Month colorblind seems like business as usual.
Florida’s speech bans have produced other absurdities as well. The state’s educational benchmarks require students to “appropriately use pronouns,” which presumes a knowledge of sex and gender. Students are introduced to pronouns in the first grade. They must master pronouns by second grade. And they review pronouns in grade 3. But Florida’s infamous “don’t say gay” law bans instruction in sexual orientation and gender identity in grades K through 3. It’s not clear how the teachers will meet these benchmarks without mentioning sex and gender.
Supplementing “don’t say gay,” Florida’s HB 1069, passed in 2023, takes specific aim at pronouns: “A person's sex is an immutable biological trait and . . . it is false to ascribe to a person a pronoun that does not correspond to such person's sex.”
That law produced another absurdity. Schools can only use the information that’s on a student’s birth certificate, so the schools in Orange County ruled that if students want to be addressed by a nickname, their parents need to fill out a permission slip.
In Orlando, the county seat of Orange County, Robert can’t be Rob or Bob or Robbie or Bobby without a parental signature. But since names can be changed, the parents of trans students can file a name-change request:
If the student’s legal name is Robert, but the student identifies as a transgender girl and uses the name Roberta, the parent may authorize a teacher or other personnel to call the student Roberta.
So far, so good. But because HB 1069 declares that pronouns are immutable and it’s illegal to use a “false” pronoun, Orlando schools can accept a parent-authorized name change from Robert to Roberta yet reject a parent-authorized pronoun change from he to she:
While the teacher and other personnel would utilize the name Roberta when requested by the parent, under the recently adopted House Bill 1069, the teacher or other personnel may elect not to utilize the pronoun ‘she/her’ when referring to Roberta. [John C. Palmerini, Deputy General Counsel Office of Legal Services, Orange County Public Schools. “Guidance regarding Parental Authorization for Deviation from Student’s Legal Name.” August 7, 2023.]
In Florida, state law now overrules the laws of grammar. Referring to a female student, Florida’s English teachers could wind up saying “Roberta . . . he,” honoring the name change but ignoring the rule that’s been a staple of classical grammar for centuries, the one that says a pronoun must agree with the noun it refers to both in number and in gender.
That creates a Catch 22: A teacher in Florida who accepts a student’s pronoun risks losing their job for using a “false pronoun” in violation of HB 1069. But a teacher obeying the state law that rejects false pronouns and says “Roberta . . . he” can also lose their job because teachers are expected to model good grammar.
And one more thing: In addition to the now-reversed ban on “black,” Florida A&M’s law students were told they couldn’t say “affirmative action” and “women” on their Black History Month flyers. So far the school, which “encourages the free exchange of ideas [and] recognizes that freedom of expression,” seems not to have reversed its ban on those “divisive” words.
