Compromise in ‘Don’t Say Gay’ lawsuit in Florida is a step forward

Florida Gov. Ron Desantis and the people who sued him are both taking victory laps over a settlement that applies some common sense and fair play to the 2022 “Parental Rights in Education” statute, better known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law.

It’s normally a good thing when a reasonable compromise ends expensive litigation. But Desantis seemed typically tone deaf.

He called it “a major win against the activists who sought to stop Florida’s efforts to keep radical gender and sexual ideology out of the classrooms.”

In fact, it was more a defeat for the governor than a win. What Desantis said about “activists” was graceless. These were citizens defending their rights. That’s what courts are for. He was the one politicizing the schools — not them.

In the settlement, Desantis accepts what he should have accepted before the Legislature did his bidding and enacted the law (HB 1557) two years ago.

That would have saved the big bucks the state spent on hiring private lawyers to defend it. It wouldn’t have forced the 19 plaintiffs to sue. It would have spared LGBTQ families across the state two years of anxiety.

It would have been the right way to make laws. It might even have shown the law to be unnecessary.

The Republican-dominated Legislature, at the time an ad hoc arm of the Desantis campaign, should have been more precise about issues that everyone knew were toxic. Instead, it left the schools to interpret them, but commanded them to err on the side of caution or face the penalties prescribed in the law.

That’s why teachers and principals were afraid to even mention LGBTQ issues or allow students to raise them in class and how library books were purged in some places, even though they weren’t intended for classroom instruction.

The settlement provides, among other things, that students can write about sexual orientation and gender identity in their schoolwork. After-school clubs such as Gay-straight Alliances are not banned and neither are library books. Teachers can still display desk photos of same-sex spouses, and teachers may not teach that heterosexuality is superior to homosexuality.

In other words, it’s OK to say gay.

What everyone should agree on is that teaching about sexual orientation and gender identity should be appropriate to the age of the students, as the compromise allows.

From the plaintiffs’ point of view, as one of their lawyers, John Quinn, said, the settlement is in some ways better than if the entire law were thrown out, because the settlement applies to the state’s preexisting “wide authority” over how students are taught.

Speaking of lawyers, the plaintiffs’ attorneys in the settled case contributed their time and talent, but the state’s don’t work for free. The built-in costs of the attorney general’s office are the least of it. Desantis hired top-notch national firms that cost far more than the attorney general.

When those legal bills were last counted by the Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times, Desantis’ private counsel legal bills were approaching $17 million for at least 15 major cases. One firm alone, Cooper & Kirk, of Washington, D.C., had racked up $5.9 million.

What’s galling is that nearly all was spent defending a culture wars agenda, such as his “Stop WOKE” and “Parental Rights” crusades that were transparently calculated to promote not only his 2022 reelection but what became his spectacularly failed campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

Other cases plod along and the legal bills mount.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently threw out the part of Desantis’ “Stop WOKE” law barring private employers from requiring diversity and anti-bias training. Still pending is his appeal of an injunction against the part of the law that suppresses teaching about racism’s history and current effects.

His newest culture war law, banning university spending on diversity, equity and inclusion, drew national attention when the University of Florida shut down its entire DEI office and fired 13 employees.

The fallout from that could eliminate the state’s universities as major players in several fields of sport.

In response, the NA ACP has urged Black athletes to “reconsider” any decision to attend a Florida public university. In other words, to boycott them.

The NAACP action followed a heartfelt outcry from Emmitt Smith, a legendary football star at UF, who said he was “utterly disgusted” by the DEI ban “and the precedent it sets.”

He called on Black athletes to be “aware and vocal” about this decision by the university that is “now closing the door on other minorities without any oversight.”

Smith is right, and more leading athletes should do the same. Alumni and fans of UF and Florida’s other state football powerhouses should express their anger to Desantis.

Florida’s accrediting agency, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, also needs to take a cue from the NAACP. It has been curiously silent about how Florida has been prostituting higher education to partisan politics.

The ban on DEI is part of a wider nationwide campaign to appease the Republican Party’s base by demonizing whatever doesn’t appeal to them.

The settlement provides, among other things, that students can write about sexual orientation and gender identity in their schoolwork.