SOUTH TALLAHASSEE, FL (WTXL) — Leon County Commissioners voted 5-2 Tuesday to spend $68,000 to support the Tallahassee-Leon County Council on the Status of Women and Girls through the end of the year — but that funding expires December 31, the day before a sweeping new state law takes effect.
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SB 1134 bars local governments from supporting programs that fund, promote or take official action on diversity, equity and inclusion.
Local leaders say there is confusion surrounding what is and is not allowed under the new law.
Leon County Commissioner Bill Proctor called the law a "turning back of the clock" and says it lacks specific measures on what is “anti-DEI.”
"It's basically very broad,” Proctor said. “We're making organizations change their language to drop their historic names, and they're trying to fit into a very sanitized a very bland identification. If you have anything with Black on it, African American on it, Asian on it, and it's a cultural event, no can do.”
The Council on the Status of Women and Girls, an advisory board that has spent years researching and raising policy issues like diaper and period product poverty, would be in violation of the law.
Director Stephanie Shumate says the organization is forced to find a workaround.
"The future of the work will continue. What that looks like and in what entity or what board or what governing body. Not sure,” Shumate said.
The Oasis Center for Women and Girls, which directly receives funding from the county to staff the CSWG board, is also taking a hit to its local-government funded programs like its Single Mom Support Group and Girls Circle Groups within Leon County Schools.
Kelly Otte says the center can only serve homeless mothers and "at risk" girls through those programs — the only exceptions under the law.
"It limits who we can serve, but it doesn't change the way we serve them,” she said. “What my board of directors and our board of directors says is we will comply with the law or we will not take the money. It's that simple."
I reached out to the bill's sponsor for clarification on the new rules, but they were not available as of Wednesday.
Shumate says they plan to spend the next three months restructuring the council.
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