The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit recently issued an opinion rejecting a public employee’s challenge to a Florida law that prohibits teachers from using their preferred pronouns in the classroom.
In 2023, as part of the “Let Kids be Kids” bill package, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed HB 1069 into law. The statute provides that “[a]n 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.” In other words, transgender teachers in the state of Florida are not permitted to share their preferred pronouns (the pronouns with which they identify), unless those pronouns match their birth sex.
In 2024, Katie Wood, a transgender woman, who works as a math teacher in Hillsborough County, Florida, filed suit challenging HB 1069 on the basis that it violated her First Amendment right to freedom of speech. The District Court ruled in her favor and determined that, in referring to herself as “Miss,” and asking her students to do the same, Wood was merely engaging in “self-referential” speech, which is “unique to Ms. Wood.” In other words, Wood’s identification of pronouns “owes its existence to her personal identity, not her official duties as a public school teacher.” As such, the trial court held that Wood was “speaking as a citizen when she provide[d] her preferred title and pronouns to students.” The court further determined that in identifying and using her preferred pronouns, Wood was speaking on a matter of public concern. Finally, the court determined that Florida’s justifications for HB 1069 essentially amounted to the perpetuation of viewpoint discrimination, which did not outweigh Wood’s First Amendment rights. Accordingly, the District Court issued a preliminary injunction, preventing the state from enforcing HB 1069 against Wood.
Florida appealed and on July 2, 2025, in Wood v. Florida Department of Education, a panel of the Eleventh Circuit reversed the decision and vacated the preliminary injunction. The court noted that Wood’s challenge to HB 1069 dealt with a “narrow swath” of expression: namely, her interactions with students in the performance of her classroom duties. It follows, the court wrote, that when a teacher addresses his or her students in the classroom, the teacher is undeniably speaking pursuant to their official duties. Therefore, when Wood verbally informed her students of her preferred pronouns, wrote said pronouns on the board, and wore a “she/her” pin, she was speaking pursuant to her official duties and without the protection of the First Amendment.
In reaching its decision the panel relied on the United States Supreme Court’s opinion in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District. In Kennedy, the Supreme Court held that a high school football coach who knelt at midfield after games “to offer a quiet prayer of thanks” was engaged in private, not government (or school sanctioned) speech, in part because he was not engaged in speech ordinarily within the scope of his duties as a coach. In that case, the Supreme Court noted the timing and circumstances of the coach’s prayers, which occurred after the game concluded, while coaches (and players) were all free to attend to personal matters. As such, the coach was not undertaking official duties at the time of his prayers.
The Eleventh Circuit explained that, in sharp contrast to the football coach, Wood offered her pronouns to her students while performing her teaching duties. It contrasted Wood’s case by noting that “when Wood addressed her students in the classroom, she was very much on the clock, discharging the very obligation the state had hired her to discharge.” To that end, the Eleventh Circuit held that Wood was unlikely to succeed on the merits of her First Amendment claim, and vacated the preliminary injunction.
In dissent, Judge Adalberto Jordan disagreed with several of the majority’s contentions. On the merits, Judge Jordan opined that Florida’s statute regulated the use of personal pronouns, which is a marker of “individual identity.” Judge Jordan argued that people use pronouns both on the job and while off the clock. According to Judge Jordan, Florida has “essentially mandated that Ms. Wood go by a different name before her students than when she clocks out for the day.” Judge Jordan also disagreed with the majority’s application of the Kennedy decision, writing that the logic of Kennedy supported Wood, because her pronouns are not intertwined with her curricular duties and therefore have nothing to do with her responsibilities as a public employee.
Judge Jordan accused the majority of applying an “expansive application of the government speech doctrine.” He argued that, in effect, the majority has sanctioned a rule whereby “everything that happens in a classroom constitutes government speech outside the ambit of the First Amendment.”
Additionally, Judge Jordan maintained that the public debate over the use of pronouns, especially related to the rights of transgender individuals, is speech on a matter of public concern which merits First Amendment protection. Finally, Judge Jordan rejected Florida’s asserted interests in the efficient operation of schools and advancement of the state’s educational policies (which Florida argued were legitimate bases for its actions), and opined that the state merely wanted “to silence those with whom it disagrees on the matter of transgender identity and status.”
Takeaways
Public school employers, as well as private employers who contract with public schools, should be mindful of the Eleventh Circuit’s ruling and adapt policies accordingly. However, this decision represents a careful balancing act, whereby public school employers in Florida are required to adhere to the state’s pronoun law. Yet, employers must also be mindful of their anti-discrimination obligations under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Supreme Court’s 2020 ruling in Bostock v. Clayton, which held that transgender status is protected under Title VII. Courts across the country have held that intentionally misgendering an employee can lead to a viable claim of sex-based harassment under Title VII.
