Katie Wood, a transgender algebra teacher, has long gone by ‘Ms Wood’ but the law required students to say ‘Teacher Wood’
Florida cannot prohibit a 10th-grade math teacher from asking her students to call her by her preferred pronouns, a federal judge has ruled.
The decision from Mark Walker, the US district judge, is a blow to an anti-LGBTQ law championed by Ron DeSantis, the state’s governor, which prohibits discussion of sexuality in public schools. A 2023 expansion of the measure, widely known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law, prohibits teachers and students from using pronouns that align with their gender identity.
The Tuesday decision, a preliminary injunction, blocks Florida from enforcing the law against Katie Wood, a transgender 10th-grade algebra teacher in Hillsborough county. Wood has long gone by “Ms Wood” in school, but the law has made her require her students to call her “Teacher Wood” – a title no one else at the school uses.
It’s insane that the self-proclaimed guardians of free speech expect the law to intervene in the words one uses to refer to themself.
Of course, that always seems to be the way with conservatives. They would like to believe, and would like others to believe, that they love individual freedom even as they demand conformity.
It’s sad, because they honestly believe that no one would ever want to gender a trans person correctly, therefore requiring that they not be is “protecting” the rights of all to speak the way they must really want to, right?
The world would be better if fewer people were sure everyone else agreed with them and investigated that claim instead.
Also the whole small government thing…really cracks me up. No politician actually wants a small government. It’s all garbage.