The Florida State Board of Education Wednesday approved firing employees for using the wrong bathroom. The new rule says using a school facility consistent with gender identity rather than gender assigned at birth just once can get employees fired. Pictured is Miami Pride Parade Sept. 19, 2021. File Photo by Cristobal Herrera-Ulashkevich/EPA-EFE
Aug. 24 (UPI) — The Florida State Board of Education unanimously approved firing school employees for using the wrong bathroom. Transgender people using state college facilities are barred from using bathrooms consistent with their gender identities.
School employees who use bathrooms that don’t align with the gender assigned at birth could be fired if they use the wrong bathroom even once.
The board made it mandatory to fire employees if they do it twice. The rules apply to private and state schools.
“Disciplinary actions may utilize a progressive discipline process that includes verbal warnings, written reprimands, suspension without pay, and termination,” the adopted proposal said. “The disciplinary action taken should be based on the specific circumstances of the offense; however, a second documented offense must result in a termination.”
The proposal approved by the board added, “Nothing in this rule prohibits an institution from immediately terminating an employee for such a violation.”
The board’s action means transgender students in dorms will be barred from using bathrooms in line with their gender identities.
During Wednesday’s board meeting most who spoke out opposed the new harsher rules. That included a mother and her transgender teen.
Carlos Guillermo Smith, a Florida state senate candidate and Equality Florida policy adviser, attended the meeting.
“It is death by a million cuts, where you just created such a toxic and hostile environment for trans people in our state that they no longer are going to want to call Florida home,” Smith said.
Maxx Fenning, executive director of Prism FL, an LGBTQ+ rights advocacy group, opposes the bathroom law and new penalties.
“Trans people just want to pee in a stall safely and mind their own business. And now college students can’t even do that in their own housing,” Fenning said. “Let trans students pee in peace, for the love of God.”
The board’s action was triggered by a law the Florida legislature passed in May as part of a package of legislation targeting LGBTQ rights.
That law banned transgender people from using bathrooms aligned with their gender identities rather than their gender assigned at birth.
The Florida State Board of Education also required the state’s 67 school districts to report which books are being targeted by people who want to ban them, books that have been banned and why.
A Tampa Bay Times school book ban analysis of reports to the Department of Education in Florida showed that over 700 out of roughly 1,100 book complaints came from two people in two counties.