Florida's ban on local DEI spending, in force Jan. 1, puts Miami-Dade advisory boards and a girls' program grant in question
Senate Bill 1134 bars counties and cities from funding or promoting programs designed with reference to race, sex, ethnicity, gender identity or sexual orientation, and makes grant recipients certify that local money will not pay for required DEI instruction. Miami-Dade is moving 19 employees off its volunteer boards.
Miami. Florida's counties and cities will be barred from funding or promoting diversity, equity and inclusion on Jan. 1, when Senate Bill 1134 takes effect. In Miami-Dade County, the first effects are reaching advisory boards and a charity grant.
Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the bill on April 22 after it passed the Senate 25 to 11 and the House 77 to 37. It defines diversity, equity and inclusion as efforts to give preferential treatment or special benefits based on race, color, sex, ethnicity, gender identity or sexual orientation, or to promote training, programming or activities designed with reference to them. Existing local programs and policies of that kind become void.
What grant recipients must certify
From Jan. 1, anyone seeking a county or city contract or grant must certify, before the award, that it does not and will not use local funds to require employees, contractors, volunteers, vendors or agents to study or be instructed with such materials.
The law still allows support for a nonprofit that provides single-sex programs for the homeless or for the education, counseling and rehabilitation of trauma-involved or at-risk youth. Residents may sue a county or city that violates it, and an official who does commits misfeasance or malfeasance in office, grounds on which the governor may suspend county officials, a Senate staff analysis notes.
“The bill is necessary because cities and counties have been funding and promoting divisive activities under the guise of DEI.”
Boards and a girls' program
In a memo released Sept. 16, Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said 19 employees who staff the county's volunteer boards would move to another department, the Miami Herald reported. The law exempts the actions of volunteer bodies and basic support for them, unless that support comes from an employee whose sole job it is. Commission Chair Anthony Rodriguez said at the Sept. 17 budget hearing that the county would be "sunsetting" certain boards and that no one in its Office of Community Advocacy would lose a job.
Neither named the boards; people familiar with the matter told the Herald they include the Hispanic Affairs, Black Affairs, Asian-American and LGBTQIA+ boards and the Commission for Women.
The budget before commissioners that night included a $223,000 grant for Girl Power Rocks, a Miami nonprofit that runs girls-only tutoring and after-school programs. Its president and chief executive, Thema Campbell, told the Herald she was "very concerned." The paper noted that the program may fit the single-sex exemption, if the county's grant office agrees.
In July, commissioners authorized county lawyers to seek clarity in court if needed, the Herald reported. Officially, a Black Affairs board member told the paper, the county attorney is still looking at the issue.
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