Archives for category: DeSantis

Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill limiting the ability of non-parents to initiate book bans. That’s a step forward since any crank was free to challenge any book under previous law. But, the same law made it easier to close public schools and hand them over to the charter industry.

TALLAHASSEE — After more than 1,200 objections were filed to library books and other materials last school year, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday signed a bill to limit challenges by nonparents or guardians.

The wide-ranging bill (HB 1285) also includes changes designed to ease the process of charter schools taking over operations at traditional public schools that are failing.

The part of the measure dealing with book challenges came after the Republican-controlled Legislature and DeSantis approved measures that ramped up scrutiny of library books and classroom materials, leading to highly publicized disputes.

More than half of the 1,218 book objections during the 2022-2023 school year occurred in two counties, Clay and Escambia, according to a Senate staff analysis. The objections resulted in the removal of 186 books in the two counties.

The bill will require that any “resident of the county who is not the parent or guardian of a student with access to school district materials may not object to more than one material per month.”

During an event Monday, DeSantis said that some people who filed mass objections to books made a “mockery” of the process.

“The idea that someone can use the parents’ rights and the curriculum transparency to start objecting to every single book, to try to make a mockery of this, is wrong. And you had examples where books were put under review that are just normal books that have been in education for many, many years,” DeSantis said.

Meanwhile, parts of the bill related to underperforming public schools would “add some oomph” to the state’s process of allowing charter schools to take over operations, DeSantis said.

Under state law, if a school receives consecutive D or F grades based on various performance criteria, the school is given two years to improve to a C under what’s known as a “turnaround plan.” If the school’s grade doesn’t make such an improvement, one option is for the school to close and reopen as a charter school.

The bill signed Tuesday will speed up converting traditional public schools to charter schools under such circumstances, by giving districts a deadline to execute charter contracts. For schools reopening as charters, districts would have to execute contracts by Oct. 1 of the following school year, and charter organizations would assume “full operational control” by July.

In Florida, it is never too soon to learn about the dangers of Communism! Governor DeSantis just signed a bill to teach about Communism in schools from K-12.

Some questions:

1) Will students learn about the dangers of Communism or the dangers of dictatorship?

2)Will students learn only about Communism only in Cuba or will they also learn about it in Russia, China, Vietnam, and Cambodia, and elsewhere?

3) Will they learn about the dangers of fascism and study the Nazis and their ideology?

4) Will students learn about dictatorship, whether Communist or fascist, and the ideology and practices they have in common, e.g. censorship of books and public media, suppression of dissent, jailing of dissidents, subservience of the judicial and legal authorities to the dictator, control of what is taught in schools and universities, persecution of ideological enemies, etc.? Assignment of books such as Brave New World, 1984, and Animal Farm. Will students be allowed to study examples of censorship and suppression in our society?

Ryan Dailey writes in The Orlando Sentinel:

Flanked by veterans who served in the Bay of Pigs invasion, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday signed a measure that will lead to the history of communism being taught from kindergarten to the 12th grade in public schools.


“We’re going to tell the truth about the evils of communism,” DeSantis said at the bill signing in Hialeah Gardens.


State lawmakers overwhelmingly approved the measure (SB 1264) during the 2024 legislative session that ended last month. Under the bill, lessons on the history of communism will be added to required instruction in public schools starting in the 2026-27 school year.


The lessons would have to be “age appropriate and developmentally appropriate” and incorporate various topics related to communism, its history in the United States, including tactics used by communists.

“Atrocities committed in foreign countries under the guidance of communism,” also would be required as part of the lessons.


“All of this will be spread across the curriculum K through 12,” said Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. The Department of Education will draw up academic standards for the lessons.


DeSantis signed the bill on the 63rd anniversary of the Bay of Pigs Invasion and was joined at the bill-signing event by people who fought in the invasion in an attempt to overthrow the Fidel Castro regime…

Florida students are already taught about communism in high-school social studies classes and in a seventh-grade civics and government course. A high-school U.S. government class required for graduation also includes 45 minutes of instruction on “Victims of Communism Day.”

Maintaining his unblemished record as the cruelest governor in the nation, Ron DeSantis signed a bill prohibiting localities from having higher standards than the state in protecting workers from excessive heats. DeSantis has been vying for the title with Greg Abbott of Texas. When DeSantis signs a bill after business hours, you can bet he knows it’s a breach of human dignity. He signed Florida’s six-week abortion ban late at night, surrounded by supporters.

TALLAHASSEE — Without fanfare and after business hours, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a law that prevents local governments from requiring worker protections from heat exposure and forbidding them to impose minimum wage requirements on contractors.

The bill, backed by business groups, was fiercely debated and received final approval from the House and Senate on March 8, the final day of the session.

DeSantis’ office revealed that he had approved the measure (HB 433) in a news release without comment on Thursday night. For much of his administration, including the past few weeks, the governor has held news conferences to celebrate his signing of bills.

In a statement, Bill Herrle, Florida director of the National Federation of Independent Business, said the new law would help “create a stable environment where owners can grow their businesses….”

But more than 90 organizations, including the Center for Biological Diversity, Earthjustice, the League of Women Voters of Florida, the Farmworker Association of Florida and the NAACP Florida State Conference signed letters asking DeSantis to veto the bill.

“Floridians feel it getting hotter and understand how difficult and dangerous it is to labor in the sun and heat,” opponents said in an April 2 letter. “Preempting local governments’ ability to protect workers from climate-caused extreme heat is inhumane and will have enormous negative economic impacts when lost productivity is taken into account.”

The heat restrictions came after the Miami-Dade County Commission last year considered a proposal to require construction and agriculture companies to ensure that workers have access to water and to give them 10-minute breaks in the shade every two hours when the heat index is at least 95 degrees.

I was thrilled when I learned that the Supreme Court of Florida decided to allow a referendum on abortion this fall. Many people, including me, feared that the Court would throw out the referendum on grounds that the term “viability” is vague, that the referendum should call for a certain number of weeks.

Shouldn’t the public have the right to judge its laws?

But our reader, self-named Democracy, says it’s too soon to celebrate. The Court ‘s decision. It turns out, on close reading, that the Court inserted a barely noticed escape hatch if the referendum passes.

DeSantis appointed five of the seven justices on the Supreme Court.

Democracy wrote:

The Florida Supreme Court didn’t just do a “two-step” on abortion, they did a three-step.

First, the conservative Republican Supremes ruled 6-1 that the state constitution’s privacy protection(s) did NOT apply to abortion. They cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson (2022) decision that REJECTED Roe v. Wade’s finding that “the constitutional right to privacy was broad enough to protect an abortion choice made by a ‘woman and her responsible physician.’ “ And, in so doing, the conservative Republican Supremes REJECTED what a previous state Supreme Court had found in interpreting Florida’s 1980 voter-approved Privacy Clause that “few decisions are more personal and intimate, more properly private, or more basic to individual dignity and autonomy, than a woman’s decision … whether to end her pregnancy.”

The conservative majority complained that when voters approved the Privacy Clause, they did not understand it to apply to abortion, an absolutely astounding claim.

As Justice Jorge Labarga wrote in dissent,

“I lament that what the majority has done today supplants Florida voters’ understanding — then and now — that the right of privacy includes the right to an abortion. The majority concludes that the public understanding of the right of privacy did not encompass the right to an abortion. However, the dominance of Roe in the public discourse makes it inconceivable that in 1980, Florida voters did not associate abortion with the right of privacy.” 

Second, the conservative Republican Supremes ruled 4-3 that a constitutional amendment guaranteeing abortion rights CAN be placed on the ballot in Florida in November. The per curiam ballot decision said this:

“We decline to adopt a standard that would effectively vest us with the power to bar an amendment from the ballot because of a supposed ambiguity in the text of the amendment.”

Republican governor Ron DeSantis and Republican Attorney General — who is a Trumper and a seditionist — were opposed to voters deciding the abortion issue. The Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion will need 60 percent of the vote to be passed.

Third, the conservative Florida Supremes hedged their bets. In oral arguments and in writing, several of the justices raised the issue of fetal personhood, questioning how an amendment protecting the right to an abortion would square with the state constitution’s guarantee that all “‘natural persons’ have a right to life and liberty.” The Chief Justice wrote that an abortion protection amendment “would constitutionalize restrictions on the people’s authority to use law to protect an entire class of human beings from private harm.”

Thus, the conservative Republican majority wrote, yes, voters CAN get to decide if they want to pass The Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion amendment, BUT it may well be in direct opposition to “personhood rights as applied to the unborn child.”

And guess who gets to decide THAT question?

As University of California-Davis law professor Mary Ziegler put it,

“They’re saying the constitution may still protect the fetus and unborn child, and that question is still alive.”

The Florida Supreme Court issued two decisions on abortion this week.

Decision One, the Court approved a ban on abortion after six weeks, one of the strictest bans in the nation. Few women realize they are pregnant at that point.

Decision Two, in a 4-3 vote, the Supreme Court agreed to allow a state referendum this November on enshrining abortion rights in the state constitution. The referendum must receive 60% approval or it won’t be adopted. About one million signed the petition requesting the vote.

Also in this November’s election, two of the three judges who voted NOT to allow the referendum will be on the ballot. The two who will stand for election are Justice Renatha Francis and Justice Meredith Sasso. Governor DeSantis, an outspoken opponent of abortion, appointed five of the seven justices on the Florida Supreme Court, including these two justices.

The Miami Herald reported:

In Florida, it’s standard for Supreme Court justices to face a retention vote shortly after their appointment, and no Supreme Court justice has ever been voted out, which requires only a simple majority. But [Justice Renatha] Francis and Justice Meredith Sasso — who along with Justice Jamie Grosshans dissented in the 4 – 3 decision — have the unique distinction of sharing a ballot with a polarizing and high-profile constitutional amendment they wanted to keep from the electorate.

Supporters of reproductive rights have the opportunity to remove two judges who voted to block the referendum.

The Florida Supreme Court issued two decisions on abortion today. Five of the seven judges were appointed by Governor DeSantis.

First, the Court ruled that the pro-abortion forces could have a referendum on the ballot in November. The referendum seeks to protect abortion rights in the state constitution. The referendum must be approved by 60% of those who vote. (In Ohio, a similar amendment was passed by 58% of voters.)

Second, the Court approved the state’s new ban on abortion by 15 weeks, which will be replaced at the end of 30 days by an even newer six-week ban, one of the strictest in the nation. Few women know they are pregnant at the six-week mark. It’s not until a woman has missed her menstrual period twice (eight weeks) that women suspect they may be pregnant.

Republican leaders are preparing to fight the referendum.

The legislature in Florida passed a bill to allow school districts to hire religious chaplains to help students in need of counseling. The bill awaits DeSantis’ signature. Pastors, priests, imams, ministers, rabbis, and other spiritual counselors are standing by.

The Miami Herald reports:

Gov. Ron DeSantis has yet to sign a bill that would allow chaplains to offer counseling in public schools, but one colorful religious figure says he is already eager to volunteer.

He’s a self-described “Hindu statesman” from Nevada who says he would like to bring “the wisdom of ancient Sanskrit scriptures” to students — perhaps not exactly what Florida lawmakers had in mind when they approved a bill that supporters tout as a way to make up for a shortage of mental health counselors in many schools.

The offer from Rajan Zed, president of the Universal Society of Hinduism, may amount to just his latest effort to raise his organization’s profile, but it also underlines concerns from critics. Mainly, that the bill’s vague definition of “counseling” will invite religious groups — whether they are Hindu, Christian or otherwise — to use it as a door to teaching their beliefs in secular school systems.

Florida has a shortage of guidance counselors, and the religious chaplains are supposed to replace the missing counselors.

“This is the beginning … of them trying to implement religion in some type of capacity back into our schools,” said Sen. Shevrin D. “Shev” Jones, D-Miami Gardens, referring to lawmakers who support the bill. “It just opens up the gate for other things.”

Jones, whose father is a pastor, said he’s concerned that the bill may lead to some schools allowing chaplains to preach to students who may not hold the same beliefs, putting them in uncomfortable situations. 

“In the words of one of my colleagues on the floor, ‘We need God back in our schools.’ But what about the child who doesn’t believe in God? What if some of the chaplains don’t resonate with the lives of those kids?” Jones said. 

He used an example of a chaplain dealing with an LGBTQ child or a child battling depression. “Has the chaplain been trained enough? Once they hear those concerns, where do they direct that child to go to?”

One of my favorite columnists is Fabiola Santiagonof the Miami Herald. She is smart, principled, and fearless. She has stood strong against Governor DeSantis’s mean-spirited, hateful culture wars. And she rejoiced when the state agreed to eviscerate the so-called “Parental Rights in Education” law, better known as “Don’t Say Gay.” DeSantis called it a “victory,” and it was a victory, but not for him.

Santiago wrote:

Take a victory lap, Floridians.

For a change, good news on the culture wars front arrives in Florida by way of successful activism, a less sycophantic Legislature — and a significant court settlement reached in a constitutional challenge to the state’s “Don’t Say Gay law.”

Students and teachers will be able to discuss LGBTQ+ issues in the classroom — as long as it’s not in the lesson plans. New, detailed guidelines from the state Department of Education about what can and can’t be said regarding sexual orientation and gender identity are supposed to be coming soon to school districts. 

One can only hope these spelled-out rules focus on helping kids understand — and respect — all kinds of families that aren’t going away just because religious zealots desire it. And that they leave out the political hysterics of past years.

In other words, the rules need to be useful.

In addition to the court settlement, there were positive developments in the Legislature: Harmful censorship and rights bills infringing on free speech and a free press, and to ban abortion in the state, were left to die on the floor or in committees.

To save face and ego, the discriminatory “Don’t say gay” law’s chief instigator, Gov. Ron DeSantis, claimed the settlement as a victory over “activists and extremists.” As if we’re all blind to the fact that the activists at work spinning rage-provoking misinformation were, among right-wingers, the Moms for Liberty he heralded, a group now losing ground here and all over the country. 

As for the state’s chief extremist, it’s DeSantis himself.

It bears repeating: Gender identity and sexual orientation was never part of the curriculum in kindergarten through third grade in Florida. As the legal challenge made clear, the overblown outrage created by falsehoods and exaggerations about “pornographic” books available to children was circulated by Republicans to set the stage to pass legislation. 

They used the first ban on elementary school-aged kids as the conduit to extend anti-gay laws to prohibit the free speech of mature high school students. The courts saw that for what it was: an attempt to send back to the closet an entire community by silencing it.

Didn’t ‘stay the course’

Voters are tired of dogmatic hogwash hijacking educational institutions.

From the offensively watered-down teaching of Black history to the redefinition of subjects areas like civics — only patriotism allowed — plus, the more recent attempt to wipe out sociology the way diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs were, all these initiatives have brought negative, world-wide attention to Florida.

To add insult to the injury, the free-speech restrictions in public education are happening at a time when a voucher system allows parents to afford whatever private education they choose for their children. But it’s never enough. Republicans want to impose conservative ideology on the rest of us.

“Stay the course,” a buoyant DeSantis urged legislators on the winter session’s opening day.

Some eager-beaver legislators heard him. But key players like Senate President Kathleen Passidomo of Naples and House Speaker Paul Renner of Palm Harbor didn’t follow his mandates this time like bobble-heads.

Perhaps they took their cues from Iowa caucus results: DeSantis pitched his “Make America Florida” — and got a no, thanks.

Critics of Governor DeSantis’s “Don’t Say Gay” law reached a settlement with the State of Florida about the limits of the law, striking out its most hateful provisions. A spokesman for DeSantis declared “victory,” but he was trying to salvage the governor’s reputation. The reality is that the settlement is a sharp rebuke to DeSantis and his puppet legislature. Unless there are two lawyers with the same name, the litigants were represented by the same lawyer who represented E. Jean Carroll.

The purpose of the law was to make LGBT people disappear by pretending they don’t exist. DeSantis lost.

If you can open the article, it contains the language of the settlement.

Leslie Postal of The Orlando Sentinel reported:

TALLAHASSEE —  Students and teachers can discuss sexual orientation and gender identity in classrooms under a proposed settlement reached Monday between the state and lawyers for LGBTQ advocates who sued over what they call the “Don’t Say Gay” law.

Activists say the deal clarifies vague language about what the law allows, while lawyers for Gov. Ron DeSantis says it keeps the Parental Rights in Education Act on the books.

The settlement agreement says the state “restricts only classroom instruction on particular subjects — “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.”  It doesn’t prohibit references to LGBTQ people, doesn’t discriminate against them or prohibit anti-bullying policies based on sexual orientation or gender identity, either.

“This settlement … re-establishes the fundamental principle, that I hope all Americans agree with, which is every kid in this country is entitled to an education at a public school where they feel safe, their dignity is respected and where their families and parents are welcomed,” Roberta Kaplan, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs, told the Associated Press. “This shouldn’t be a controversial thing.”

It also protects the legitimacy of gay student groups, safeguards against hate and bullying and allows LGBTQ students and teachers to display pictures of their partners and families. It also says library books are not subject to the law.

Filed with the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, it requires the Florida Board of Education to send the agreement to all 67 school districts and make clear “the settlement reflects the considered position of the State of Florida on the scope and meaning of this law.”

The governor’s office, without offering any evidence, said the ruling was “a major win against the activists who sought to stop Florida’s efforts to keep radical gender and sexual ideology out of the classrooms of public-school children in kindergarten through third grade” because it kept the law intact.

“We fought hard to ensure this law couldn’t be maligned in court, as it was in the public arena by the media and large corporate actors,” said Florida General Counsel Ryan Newman. “We are victorious, and Florida’s classrooms will remain a safe place under the Parental Rights in Education Act.”

Despite arguing that the bill didn’t prevent people from talking about sexual orientation or gender identity in school, or even having materials that mentioned those topics, the law led to widespread confusion. Schools across the state banned gay-themed books, Gay Pride events, dances and LGBTQ support groups, even to the point of taking down rainbow stickers and other LGBTQ messages.

Central Florida school districts were among those that removed library books for fear they violated the law. The Seminole County school district, for example, last year decided “Jacob’s New Dress,” a storybook about a boy who wants to wear a dress to school, could not be available in primary grade libraries.

The Lake County school district removed three books from school libraries last school year, including “And Tango Makes Three,” a picture book based on a true story of two male penguins in Central Park Zoo who raised a chick together. That was “done in compliance with Florida state law, specifically 2022 House Bill 1557,” a district attorney wrote.

Lake schools reversed its decision on “And Tango Makes Three” after attorneys for the state, in another lawsuit, wrote that the law applied only to “formal” classroom instruction and not to library books. But that opinion, embedded in a memorandum filed in federal court in late 2022, was not necessarily widely known.

The deal came after two years of court hearings. U.S. District Judge Allen Winsor in Tallahassee twice threw it out on grounds the plaintiffs had no standing.

The plaintiffs appealed Winsor’s decision and agreed to a settlement because the appeals process would have taken years.

Under the deal, the law also doesn’t prohibit “incidental references in literature to a gay or transgender person or to a same-sex couple. Such references, without more, are not ‘instruction on’ those topics.”

References to gay or transgendered individuals are not instruction “on sexual orientation or gender identity any more than a math problem asking students to add bushels of apples is ‘instruction on’ apple farming,” the agreement said.

Typical classroom discussion and schoolwork don’t count as instruction, the settlement said, “even if a student chooses to address sexual orientation or gender identity.”

The statute allows teachers to “respond if students discuss their identities or family life … “provide grades and feedback” if a student chooses “LGBTQ identity” as an essay topic, and answer “questions about their families.”

It also doesn’t require the removal of safe space stickers or safe spaces for LGBTQ students.

It doesn’t prohibit Gay-Straight Alliances, book fairs that include LGBTQ+ focused books, gay-themed musicals or plays, or other extracurricular activities including dances, wearing gay-themed clothing, and non-conforming garb.

To say that opposite-sex attraction was the norm or that “heterosexuality is superior or that gender identity is immutable based on biological traits,” would be equally prohibited under the statute, the agreement states.

Staff writer Leslie Postal and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

At DeSantis’s urging, the Florida legislature passed a law known as “Stop Woke.” The law restricts teaching about race and gender in the state’s classrooms and bans “diversity, equity, and inclusion” programs in the workplace. Several employers sued to block the law, calling it a restriction on free speech. The employers won in the federal District Court, and the state appealed the decision. Today the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the Stop Woke Act as applied to employers. It remains in effect for schools.

The Orlando Sentinel reported:

TALLAHASSEE — A federal appeals court Monday rejected restrictions that Gov. Ron DeSantis and Republican lawmakers placed on race-related issues in workplace training, part of a 2022 law that DeSantis dubbed the “Stop WOKE Act.”


A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the restrictions violated First Amendment rights.


“This is not the first era in which Americans have held widely divergent views on important areas of morality, ethics, law and public policy,” the 22-page opinion said. “And it is not the first time that these disagreements have seemed so important, and their airing so dangerous, that something had to be done. But now, as before, the First Amendment keeps the government from putting its thumb on the scale.”


The panel upheld a preliminary injunction issued in 2022 by Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker of Tallahassee against the restrictions. The law was challenged by Primo Tampa, LLC, a Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream franchisee; Honeyfund.com, Inc., a Clearwater-based technology company that provides wedding registries; and Chevara Orrin and her company, Collective Concepts, LLC.

Orrin and her company provide consulting and training to employers about issues such as diversity, equity and inclusion.


Walker also separately issued a preliminary injunction against part of the law that would restrict the teaching of race-related concepts in universities. The state has appealed that decision.


The workplace-training part of the law listed eight race-related concepts and said that a required training program or other activity that “espouses, promotes, advances, inculcates, or compels such individual (an employee) to believe any of the following concepts constitutes discrimination based on race, color, sex, or national origin.”


As an example, the law targeted compelling employees to believe that an “individual, by virtue of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin, bears personal responsibility for and must feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress because of actions, in which the individual played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, sex, or national origin.”

The state disputed that the law violated speech rights, saying that it regulated “conduct.” It said businesses could still address the targeted concepts in workplace training but couldn’t force employees to take part.


But the appeals court flatly rejected such arguments Monday. It described the law as the “latest attempt to control speech by recharacterizing it as conduct. Florida may be exactly right about the nature of the ideas it targets. Or it may not. Either way, the merits of these views will be decided in the clanging marketplace of ideas rather than a codebook or a courtroom.”