A bill that would prevent public employees and state contractors from being forced to comply with an individual’s requested pronoun usage moved through its first committee amid plenty of backlash from critics.

The Senate Government Oversight and Accountability Committee advanced the “Freedom of Conscience in the Workplace Act” (SB 440) on a 5-2 vote with Senators breaking along party lines. The often contentious meeting included several citizens calling lawmakers “bigots” and saying the bill would allow job discrimination against LGBTQ individuals. Republican Sen. Randy Fine at one point also derided a citizen’s Arabic keffiyeh as a “terrorist rag.”

“I’m the chairman,” said Fine, a Palm Bay Republican. “I can say what I want. If you don’t like it you can leave.”

Sen. Stan McClain, an Ocala Republican and the bill’s sponsors, said the legislation would not hurt the job prospects of any Floridians to obtain gainful employment. Instead, it would protect the conscience of individuals who do not want to use preferred pronouns for those claiming something beside their gender assigned at birth.

The bill would also require any government forms to identify employees as male or female. The bill applies to public employees and state contractors, not private employers, McClain stressed.

“The policy of the state is that there are only two genders,” McClain said.

But numerous transgender activists, many asking lawmakers to use “they/them” pronouns, said the bill was an intrusion and a waste of time.

Equality Florida has derided the legislation as the “Don’t Say Gay or Trans at Work” bill, and lobbied against the policy.

Sanford City Commissioner Claudia Thomas, the first openly gay member of her City Commission, said the bill not only insults LGBTQ Floridians but will waste government resources.

“I would love to get back to trying to solve my city’s problems about water, clean water, housing, etc.” Thomas said. “And if I have to start wasting my time talking about pronouns and people not respecting my friends, it would make me sad.”

Several social conservative groups said the bill was important to pass, and said too many local governments were forcing “woke” policies mandating recognition of gender theory many oppose on a moral level.

“It ends coercive pronoun mandates. It doesn’t take anyone’s rights away,” said John Labriola, a lobbyist for the Christian Family Coalition. “A number of local counties, including here in Leon County, have woke trainings that actually force employees to learn certain pronouns. Ze is one of them. Ze, if you don’t want to be he or she.”

But nonbinary speakers said the bill effectively discriminated against a growing population of Floridians whose gender identity differs from their birth certifications.

“I’m nonbinary. I exist,” said Ash Bradley. “The debate over personal beliefs versus the rights of marginalized groups shouldn’t even be happening, especially when taxpayers are required to miss work and drive hours just to fight a bill built to make bullying acceptable in the workplace.”

Last week, activists in the Capitol hoped the bill was dead after the Senate committee declined to take it up after receiving hundreds of comment cards opposing the legislation.

But the committee did take up the bill on Tuesday and approved it. The legislation now heads to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

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David Jolly once won a bitter fight to represent a Florida swing seat in Congress as a Republican. Now, he’s exploring a run for Governor by meeting with Democratic clubs across the state.

Jolly, who spent much of his political energy in the last decade promoting political movements outside the two-party system, said he will run as a Democrat if he decides to seek the Governor’s Mansion next year.

“I’ve considered myself a proud member of the Democratic Coalition for years now,” Jolly told Florida Politics. “The coalition I would need is essentially the same. You need Democrats, independents and kind of mainstream Republicans to build a coalition. If you do it as an NPA (no party affiliation candidate) or as a Democrat, you are still asking if you can change the state.”

Jolly met with the Legislative Black Caucus, a heavily Democrat-leaning group of elected officials, in a Monday meeting first reported by POLITICO. But more important, Jolly said, have been meetings with local Democratic clubs all throughout the state over much of the past year. From speaking with party regulars, he feels his current political philosophy largely aligns with Florida Democrats.

But he has identified as nonpartisan since 2018, when he left the Republican Party halfway into President Donald Trump’s first term in the White House. He also has been involved in third-party politics, whether as Executive Director of the Serve America Movement in 2020 or as one of the co-founders of the Forward Party in 2022.

But Jolly said he can’t deny that American democracy is built around the two-party system.

“I still like multiparty democracies,” he said. “Around the world, they have greater participation, better satisfaction, better outcomes. But we don’t have a multiparty system in the U.S.”

Despite a shift toward Republican politics in the last four years, Jolly sees a hunger in Florida for a break from reactionary government. “Republicans spent eight years fighting culture wars,” he said. “Voters want them to address the insurance crisis and have better schools.”

He said his platform will focus on topics like reforming the insurance market and making sure Florida vouchers for private schools are adjusted for inflation rather than being paid at a low amount that still won’t help families.

He also believes one-party rule has resulted in open corruption in state government, and believes the public would embrace campaign finance reforms to combat that.

With term limits prohibiting Gov. Ron DeSantis from running again, Jolly said he also sees a path to victory that’s more clear just because there is an open seat.

“This is a good cycle for Florida to choose its direction,” he said.

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Legislation to allow guns on college campuses died in its first committee hearing after too few GOP lawmakers were in the room to keep it alive.

The Senate Criminal Justice Committee voted 4-3 against the legislation (SB 814), which would have enabled lawful gun owners to carry their weapons onto any college or university campus, including dormitories and resident halls.

Brevard County Republican Sen. Randy Fine said the change is needed after Jewish college students faced threats of “on-campus Muslim terror” following the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

“A child going to a university — an 18-, a 19-, a 20-year-old — deserves to be able to walk through campus, deserves to be able to fight their way out of a building if people hold them there, deserves when a mob surrounds them and attacks them — it’s happened at my alma mater — that they can do something about it,” he said.

“You have the right to defend yourself, and that right doesn’t go away because you walked onto a college campus.”

Too many of Fine’s Senate colleagues thought the bill was too drastic a change. Republican Sen. Ileana Garcia joined Democratic Sens. Mack Bernard, Jason Pizzo and Carlos Guillermo Smith in voting “no.”

Republican Sens. Joe Gruters, Clay Yarborough and Jonathan Martin voted “yes.”

Republican Sens. Jennifer Bradley and Corey Simon were absent from the vote.

Tuesday’s vote marks the end for SB 814, which lost its House counterpart (HB 31) early this year when Republican sponsor Joel Rudman, a former Navarre Representative who resigned for an unsuccessful run at Congress, withdrew the proposal.

This is likely the last time Fine will run the bill in Tallahassee. He tendered his resignation, effective March 31, in November within hours of announcing his bid for Florida’s 6th Congressional District.

In January, Fine — who carries an endorsement from Donald Trump — trounced two underfunded Primary foes to clinch the GOP nomination.

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This report is developing and will be updated.

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