Catholic bookstore files lawsuit against Jacksonville for pronoun use law
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (FLV) – Queen of Angels Catholic bookstore filed a lawsuit against a Jacksonville law, claiming it is against their religious beliefs to use someone’s preferred pronouns that are not in alignment with biological sex.
Alliance Defending Freedom represents the bookstore, saying in their blog that the city’s law requires the business to speak against its beliefs and to silence its religious views to remain in business.
The bookstore stands firm on its beliefs that men and women are different and cannot use pronouns or titles that don’t align with a customer’s sex, according to the attorney’s blog post.
The post said the owner of the bookstore, Christie DeTrude, wants to explain this policy and her Catholic beliefs about gender and sexuality in her store and on the store’s website.
However, the lawsuit said that is illegal under Jacksonville’s Human Rights Ordinance, which forbids communications that could lead someone to feel “unwelcome” based on various protected traits.
Jacksonville’s Human Rights Ordinance says an individual may file a complaint of discrimination if he or she feels they have been denied the full and equal enjoyment of goods, services, or facilities offered to the general public based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.
“Free speech is for everyone. Americans should be free to say what they believe without fear of government punishment,” ADF legal counsel Rachel Csutoros said. “Christie, owner of Queen of Angels Catholic Bookstore, gladly serves everyone, but she can’t speak messages that go against her religious beliefs. Yet Jacksonville is illegally mandating Queen of Angels abandon its religious beliefs—the very faith that motivates the store to open its doors to customers every day.”
According to the lawsuit, Jacksonville has expanded its public-accommodation law to cover gender identity discrimination and thereby require businesses to address customers using their preferred pronouns and titles, regardless of their biological sex.
The law prevents businesses from publishing “any communication” a customer or government official might interpret as making someone feel “unwelcome, objectionable, or unacceptable,” such as statements opposing gender identity ideology, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit says all of the above puts Jacksonville’s law on a “collision course” with the First Amendment and the Catholic bookstore.
“Jacksonville’s law provides numerous exemptions in its public-accommodations section and elsewhere to allow entities to engage in discrimination,” the suit says. “But it provides no exemption for businesses like Queen of Angels to speak and operate in accordance with its sincerely held religious beliefs.”
The lawsuit says the Jacksonville law requires the Catholic bookstore to “stop being fully Catholic.”
“But the government has no need nor right to force Americans to profess ideological views they oppose. Our pluralistic country is big enough and sturdy enough to allow people of good faith to express different views, even when the government disagrees,” the suit says. “In fact, the Constitution demands it. And Jacksonville is better for it.”
ADF attorneys filed the lawsuit, Queen of Angels Catholic Bookstore v. City of Jacksonville, in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Jacksonville Division.
