Florida: Ruling on LGBTQ+ rights will be enforced

They’ve been fighting for more than two decades, and now LGBTQ people in every corner of Florida will have the same civil rights protections their peers enjoy in the more liberal pockets of the state.

Florida’s Commission on Human Relations (FCHR), the state’s civil rights enforcement agency, says it will enforce a Supreme Court ruling that deemed discrimination based on gender and sexual orientation illegal.

The decision means the FCHR will investigate claims of antiLGBTQ discrimination — giving an estimated 880,000 LGBTQ people in Florida a path to pursue justice for the first time.

“The FCHR is committed to investigating housing violations based upon sex discrimination due to non-conformity with gender stereotypes,” the agency wrote in a statement.

The FCHR said it will be watching for guidance from its federal partners, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The move by FCHR comes on the heels of President Joe Biden’s executive order that reinforces Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and implements the nondiscrimination protections across federal agencies, a policy that reverses action by former President Donald Trump’s administration.

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County affirmed that discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations — such as hotels, restaurants, gas stations, and entertainment venues — based on gender and sexual orientation is illegal.

The protections are mirrored after federal civil rights statutes, said Joe Saunders, senior political director for Equality Florida. And it gives those who experience discrimination an official state channel through which to file a claim and affords them the full protection of Florida’s civil rights laws, according to Equality Florida.

“The bottom line here is that the LGBTQ community now is protected in the same way as folks who experience discrimination on the basis of race and religion,” he said.

Saunders, one of the first queer people elected to the Florida House of Representatives, sponsored legislation in 2012 that would protect civil rights for LGBTQ Floridians, and saw it filed again every year afterward, he said.

“The fact that we have gotten to that today is so important to me,” he said. “Forty percent of the state does not live in a community where they have access to nondiscrimination protections — places like Pensacola, and most conservative places that have been very hostile to the LGBTQ community. Theses are the places where it’s needed most.”