Legislature & Courts
NEW! See the ACLU of Florida's 2009 Regular Session summary!
Amidst the most severe financial crisis and budget shortfall the state has seen in many years, Florida legislators still found time this legislative session to try to pass several pieces of legislation that would have stripped rights from voters, made reproductive healthcare more difficult and expensive to obtain, created license plates that would have been tantamount to government-sponsored religion, and more. But on key fronts, we won, and we won big!
Thousands of ACLU members and supporters contacted their legislators and Governor Crist, and our voices were heard. Numerous harmful pieces of legislation were defeated, and key civil liberties protected, thanks in large part to the willingness of ACLU supporters to speak out and take action. Thank you to everyone who made calls and sent e-mails. We couldn'0t have done this without you.
Many of the bills we tracked and opposed this session were important, but our energy was focused like a laser on defeating the voter suppression bills that would have curtailed voters' rights at every stage of the electoral process. The efforts of our supporters, combined with our lobbyists' work in Tallahassee, our Voting Rights Project based in Miami, and the critical mass of the over 40 organizations that the ACLU of Florida helped organize to fight for one single cause, brought this legislation to its knees.
In other good news, bills that would have encroached on a woman's right to choose went nowhere. A bill that would have opened the door to the teaching of creationism as science in our public school science classrooms also gained no traction. Bills that would have established license plates with religious depictions came close to passage but were defeated in the end. Some very negative bills that did pass, but the largest of the threats either never came to fruition or were soundly defeated.
While our victories in defeating some major threats are to be celebrated, unfortunately the 2009 session offered few opportunities to move forward bills that would have protected and extended Floridians' civil liberties. We supported various important bills:
Civil Rights Legislation: creating statewide protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Floridians. We hope this will be back next year.
Adoption: Repealing the ban preventing gays and lesbians from adopting children. Although this legislation didn't come up, we continue to fight this bigoted and unique ban through our lawsuit against the state, which is now in the 3rd District Court of Appeals on behalf of a father of two foster children in North Miami.
Prevention First: assuring that rape survivors have access to emergency contraception no matter what sexual assault treatment center they utilize, and ensuring that all women with valid prescriptions (if required) are able to access contraception.
Healthy Teens: guaranteeing that schools choosing to provide sexuality education provide information that is medically accurate.
Civil Rights Restoration: breaking the link between employment licensing and restoration of civil and voting rights for persons with past felony convictions. In a true sign of progress, the Senate voted in favor of this legislation this year after it successfully passed three committees. We will work for passage by the full legislature next year.
Click here to see an archive of previous ACLU of Florida Legislative Session summaries.
