Equality Florida Legislative Update

FL Senator Anna Cowin Wants Necrophilia and Phone Sex Added to Safe Schools Bill

(Tallahassee) Senator Anna Cowin has blocked progress on a safe schools bill by proposing a series of amendments to the Dignity for All Students Act including references to obscene phone calls and sex with corpses and animals.

"We can only guess at her intentions because the sheer volume of her amendments have blocked even so much as a hearing on the bill," said Nadine Smith, Executive Director of Equality Florida. "Either she thinks dealing with school safety is a joke or she's manipulating the system to block any real debate on a critical school safety issue."

The Dignity for All Students Act would require schools getting public tax dollars to ban harassment and discrimination, provide training to educators to deal with these situations before they escalate to violence and ensure the effectiveness of the training is tracked.

The bill has drawn strong bipartisan support and has more than 22 sponsors in the House and Senate.

Similar laws have passed in 8 states and three others are considering such legislation.

While most states have passed the laws in response to educators, students, parents and community requests, some have been compelled to act by costly lawsuits.

Twice, parents, students and educators have traveled to Tallahassee to tell their stories of harassment in classes and the failure of the school system to keep students in a safe learning environment. Twice they've been denied the opportunity when the bill was tabled due to the volume of amendments and the committee's time limits.

In addition to Equality Florida, more than 150 organizations across the state have made passage of the Dignity bill a legislative priority including the Florida PTA, Florida Education Association, the NAACP, the ACLU, the League of Hispanic Voters, GLSEN and the Florida AFL-CIO.

The bill protects all students and provides specific guidelines around harassment based on race, color, religion, national origin, marital status, sex or gender, disability or sexual orientation.

Despite the inclusiveness of the bill, opponents have most often targeted "sexual orientation" despite research showing that students perceived to be gay or lesbian are the most frequent targets of the most vicious harassment.

Opponents have distributed inflammatory emails nationwide that distort the bill's intention, sparking hundreds of out-of-state calls to Tallahassee.

Anthony Verdugo, the leader of the failed effort to repeal Miami-Dade's human rights ordinance claims to be the architect of Cowin's strategy. Following the April 9th hearing, Cowin's aide congratulated Verdugo in the hallway.

Many Floridians may recognize Verdugo as the man arrested and charged with fraud when prosecutors discovered forged signatures were widespread on the repeal petitions he gathered. If convicted, the felony charges carry a possible five year prison term.

On the same day Cowin's tactics caused the bill to be tabled in the Senate Education committee, a federal appeals court ruled that Public school administrators who fail to take effective steps to counter anti-gay harassment may violate the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of equal protection of the law.

Merely having an anti-discrimination policy is insufficient if the policy is not enforced, according to the 3-0 ruling by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The ruling covers school districts in California and eight other Western states.

Without policies and practices to curb harassment and discrimination, research shows that, students will look for ways to escape including dropping out, drug use and all too often, suicide. A study by the U.S. Secret Service found that in the majority of school shootings they reviewed, the shooter had been bullied and felt "persecuted" before they acted out..