ABOVE: HB 1475 targeting trans youth passes the Florida House 77-40. Screenshot via the Florida Channel.
TALLAHASSEE | The Florida House of Representatives passed House Bill 1475 (HB 1475) April 14, anti-LGBTQ legislation targeting transgender youth who play sports.
HB 1475 is one of a growing number of similar measures being considered across the country. Despite opposition from LGBTQ civil rights organizations, sports teams and athletic groups alike, the Republican-controlled chamber passed the bill 77-40.
If signed into law, the legislation would go into effect July 1. Its text states that HB 1475 would require “certain athletic teams or sports sponsored by certain educational institutions be designated on basis of students’ biological sex.”
Furthermore, it “prohibits athletic teams or sports designated for female students to be open to male students,” requiring that students’ schools “resolve disputes regarding student’s sex.” It also notes that Florida’s Board of Education will adopt rules and provide civil remedies.
Equality Florida, the state’s largest LGBTQ civil rights organization, has denounced HB 1475 throughout the current legislative session. Ahead of its passage, officials were joined by community advocates including openly LGBTQ State Reps. Carlos Guillermo Smith and Michele Rayner. The Democrats were among those in their party to propose more than 20 amendments to HB 1475, all of which Republicans voted against.
“This legislation manipulates our fundamental sense of fairness into an attack on transgender youth, using them as a sword in a culture war,” Equality Florida Public Policy Director Jon Harris Maurer shared. “But on the other side of these cheap political attacks are real lives and real people. That’s where Equality Florida and our partners standing with us today … want you to hear.”
HB 1475 “is purely political,” Guillermo Smith followed. “It plays on fears and ignorance about the transgender community in order to score partisan points. This reckless legislation expels transgender children from the athletic teams they are already playing on – disrupting their education and humiliating them in front of their peers … if passed, House Bill 1475 will be the most anti-LGBTQ legislation passed in Florida in the past 23 years.”
Rayner spoke next, making an emotional plea to her Republican colleagues to vote against HB 1475. She noted that its passage will have “very real consequences for our children,” not just for transgender students but for those who are cisgender as well.
“Stand up and do what’s right,” she concluded. “Stand up and do the things that you’ve told me and Rep. Guillermo Smith that privately, you know that this is a bad bill. Do what is right.”
Watch the press conference in full below:
The two lawmakers were subsequently joined on the House floor by a number of LGBTQ allies in passionately denouncing HB 1475, including Rep. Anna Eskamani and other Democrats. The bill passed without Democratic support.
A hearing on HB 1475’s companion in the Florida Senate, Senate Bill 2012, was postponed earlier this week.
