One of the more repulsive features of Florida’s new law restricting classroom discussion of sex and gender is its vagueness. This might be a feature, not a bug: It could encourage conservative parents to sniff out violators around every classroom corner, contributing to the atmosphere of
moral panic it appears designed to stoke.
But, in an example of how the worst-intentioned legislating can backfire on bad actors, the law’s vagueness might end up handing opponents a hidden weapon against it.
The Florida law that Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis
signed last month empowers parents to take actions against offending school boards. But lawyers challenging it now tell me they think liberal parents might use this same tool to wage guerrilla legal resistance designed to expose its true intentions, making it more legally vulnerable.
If so, it could help expose the epic bad faith at the core of this whole project, which employs such legislation to
foment parents’ fear of an army of deviants out to pervert or indoctrinate their kids.
[. . .]
So what’s to stop parents from bringing actions against school boards from the other side — against references to heterosexuality or cisgenderism that can be deemed “instruction” in “sexual orientation or gender identity”?
“If a teacher can’t assign a story about a young girl who comes home after school to her two mommies, that teacher also can’t assign a book about a young girl who comes home to her mommy and daddy.” Taking the law at face value, Matz said, both “equally instruct” on “sexual orientation.”
Such actions from the left might be rooted in a desire to lay bare the law’s actual intent. If the law’s sponsors object to such actions while supporting ones brought against invocation of LGBT matters, doesn’t that give away the game?