Today, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the Legal Defense Fund (LDF), and Southern Legal Counsel (SLC) filed a lawsuit against the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office on behalf of the nonprofit civil rights organization, the Council on American-Islamic Relations-Florida (CAIR-FL). The lawsuit argues that the Pasco County Sheriff Office’s refusal to provide demographic information about its predictive policing program targeting students is a violation of the Florida Public Records Act.

Recognizing they were likely to lose a potentially costly legal fight, City of Lake Worth Beach officials repealed two ordinances at the center of a federal lawsuit Southern Legal Counsel and West Palm Beach pro bono attorney Sabarish P. Neelakanta of SPN Law filed in June.

The lawsuit challenged the city’s enforcement of local ordinances that unlawfully prohibited public charitable solicitation, which is protected speech under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Florida House Bill 1557, commonly referred to as the “Don’t Say Gay” law, which bans discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in grades K-3 and restricts such discussions for students through grade 12 based on undefined standards of appropriateness.

“Southern Legal Counsel, Florida Health Justice Project, Lambda Legal, and National Health Law Program urge the Florida Board of Medicine to stop playing politics with people’s health care and not to adopt guidelines for a standard of care to treat gender dysphoria that are contrary to the evidence-based and overwhelming consensus that gender-affirming medical care for the treatment of gender dysphoria is safe, effective, and medically necessary.”

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – In a case going back to 2015, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held Aug. 31 that the City of Fort Lauderdale's Park Rule 2.2, banning outdoor food sharing as a social service in public parks, violates the First Amendment.