The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a public school teacher was not entitled to a preliminary injunction against a Florida law which states that “an employee or contractor of a public K-12 educational institution may not provide to a student his or her preferred personal title or pronouns if such preferred personal title or pronouns do not correspond to his or her sex.” The Eleventh Circuit vacated the preliminary injunction and remanded the case back to the district court.
In Wood v. Florida Department of Education, an algebra teacher at a Florida public high school in Hillsborough County, challenged Fla. Stat. § 1000.071 which prohibits him from using pronouns not consistent with his biological sex in the classroom. Wood was born a biological male but now identifies as a woman. Wood argued the law violated his First Amendment right to free speech and sought a preliminary injunction to prevent its enforcement. The United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida granted Wood a preliminary injunction, reasoning that the use of preferred pronouns constituted speech as a private citizen and the interest in expressing gender identity outweighed the state’s interest in promoting workplace efficiency.
