Florida Senate committee passes anti-grooming bill, faces backlash over term ‘groomer’

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Florida Senate legislation combatting the grooming of children for sexual activity passed its first committee assignment on Tuesday.

An amendment to the bill, introduced by the sponsor, matched it with the House version that makes it a third degree felony for someone over 18 to sexually groom a minor less than 16.

Sen. Jason Pizzo, D-Hollywood, lashed out during the debate period of the bill, claiming Democrats were being called “groomers” for supporting people who identify as LGBTQ during previous legislative sessions.

He went so far as to argue that the “only” people doing “deviant sexual conduct” were on the “other side of the aisle.”

Sen. Jonathan Martin, R-Fort Myers, sponsored SB 1238, which passed the Senate Committee on Criminal Justice favorably.

Reps. Taylor Yarkosky, R-Montverde, and Doug Bankson, R-Apopka, filed the House companion legislation to the bill, which has passed two committees so far.

Democratic senators asked several questions relating to specific hypothetical situations and the potential for innocent individuals to get prosecuted under the law.

Martin said that in order for a person to be charged with the felony, there has to be a proven repeated pursuit by the individual to encourage sexual activity.

He expressed confidence that educators and adults who work on sexual healthcare would not be prosecuted.

Martin also said he plans on bringing up more amendments, such as protecting people who teach sexual education.

Quinn Diaz from Equality Florida said that although child sexual abuse is “devastating,” the organization opposes the bill because it is “over broad.”

“This bill seeks to target predatory motives and patterns of behavior. Again, we do not oppose that goal, but it does sweep too broadly and risks banning, or at the very least, chilling important conversations where there is no harmful intent,” Diaz said, parroting comments made by the group’s public policy director, John Maurer, during a previous committee meeting on for the House bill.

Faith leaders, including one man who said he was the pastor of a Lutheran church, expressed their concerns with the legislation and the harm it may cause to people who identify as LGBTQ.

John Labriola with the Christian Family Coalition spoke in favor of the bill during the public comment period.

“We know that the vast majority of child sexual trafficking cases begin with a pattern of grooming,” he said. “So the earlier we can get law enforcement involved to prevent it from rising to that level, the better off we’ll be at keeping those incidences of human trafficking happening.”

Although Pizzo said he would vote in favor of the bill, he took the opportunity during the committee to attack Republicans, particularly staffers in the governors office, for what he claimed was their intent to label Democrats as “groomers” during previous legislative sessions.

“Y’all were okay with everyone calling Democrats groomers over the last couple of years,” Pizzo said.

Lawmakers could be heard murmuring “that’s not true” in response.

“From the executive [branch] on over, Democrats were called groomers,” he said. “Even those of us working a hundred hours a week to put away bad people. And everybody was complicit in it.”

“Enough is enough. The deviant sexual conduct has only been by the other side of the aisle over the last couple years,” Pizzo said.

He said that the reason he was supportive of the bill was because the Senate Minority Leader Lauren Book, R-Davie, was in favor of it and she was “more educated” on the topic then anyone else.