2025 Municipal Candidate Questionnaire

Please upload a high resolution photo of you. Should you receive an endorsement from the Equality Florida Action PAC, this photo will be used in our announcement.

In recent years, the Florida Legislature has been at the vanguard of anti-LGBTQ attacks, introducing dozens of bills directly impacting the LGBTQ community, with several bills being enacted into law. Among the anti-LGBTQ laws enacted, many have been challenged in court, with multiple laws being struck down as unconstitutional, few provisions surviving constitutional review, and several that remain in pending litigation. Given the shifting legal landscape, the following questions are asked only to the extent that current law allows and are not inquiring about support for adopting policies that are in conflict with existing law.

In 2020, the US Supreme Court ruled in Bostock v. Clayton County in a 6 - 3 majority decision that discrimination on the basis of “sex” includes discrimination on the basis of “sexual orientation” and “gender identity”. In 2021, the Florida Commission on Human Relations, Florida’s agency charged with interpreting and administering the protections of the Florida Civil Rights Act and the Florida Fair Housing Act, began implementing this decision in state law and, as a result, Florida’s gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community is protected by state law from discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations.

Equality Florida believes that Floridians deserve options at the local, state, and federal level for addressing anti-LGBTQ discrimination and bias. Florida’s cities and counties have a long history of expanding access to nondiscrimination laws locally, adapting local laws to fill gaps that state law does not currently address.

In 2023, the Legislature passed an Anti-Trans Bathroom Law that regulates bathrooms and changing facilities in government buildings and certain other settings. The law allows for single-stall facilities to be all-user (not sex-segregated) facilities, but it requires that multi-stall facilities be designated exclusively “male” or “female” based on one’s “sex assigned at birth”.

Drag has long been an art form of performance for celebration and entertainment in private venues and in public spaces. In 2023, the Legislature enacted an intentionally broad law designed to intimidate and censor drag performances. Florida’s “Drag Ban” prohibits certain “adult live performances” when minors are in attendance. The law, if fully implemented following ongoing litigation, imposes misdemeanor liability for a government employee who issues a permit for an event where a minor is knowingly admitted to such “adult live performances".

In addition to managing local library systems, Florida law allows local governments to operate, manage, and partner with K-12 schools that receive public education dollars. At the state and district level books that include gay parents or any LGBTQ characters are being challenged and removed from school bookshelves by anti-LGBTQ extremists.

On June 12, 2016, forty nine people were murdered with an assault rifle during Latin night at Pulse--an LGBTQ nightclub in Orlando. Florida law currently preempts virtually all firearm regulations to the state and prohibits local governments from enacting their own gun safety ordinances.

Even as we celebrate the freedom to marry for same sex couples, it is important to understand that some couples do not marry, for reasons both personal and practical. These families are just as deserving of health care and other vital protections offered through domestic partnership benefits, which they rely on to care for their loved ones. In some municipalities, opposite sex couples make up nearly three-quarters of those registered for domestic partner benefits.

Although the following issues may be decided at the state and federal level, municipalities are often asked to pass resolutions in support or opposition of various policy issues.