Florida bill bans pronoun requirements, penalties at the workplace

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Rep. Ryan Chamberlin, R-Ocala, introduced a bill that would crack down on pronoun mandates and penalties in the workplace.

It would protect employees and contractors from penalization and punishment by employers if they are required to use, or refer to others with, certain titles and pronouns that don’t correspond with a person’s biological sex.

The bill, HB 599, also prevents non-profit organizations that receive state funding from requiring, as a condition of employment, any “training, instruction, or activity on sexual orientation.”

Additionally, the legislation bars employers – governmental agencies or bodies, state or local – from using “adverse personnel action” on the basis of “deeply held religious or biology-based beliefs.”

Adverse personnel actions in the bill include the reduction in salary, the withholding of bonuses, suspension, discharge or demotion.

The legislation reaffirmed that it is “unlawful” for an employer to take those actions if the employee holds “traditional or biblical views of sexuality and marriage.”

”It is the policy of the state that a person’s sex is an immutable biological trait and that it is false to ascribe to a person a pronoun that does not correspond to such person’s sex,” the bill read.

The legislature passed bills related to gender identity in the 2023 Legislative Session.

HB 1069 prohibits a school from requiring that an employee or student, as a condition of employment or enrollment or participation in any program, refer to another person by a pronoun that does not correspond to that person’s sex.