A Catholic bookstore in North Florida has settled a federal lawsuit with the City of Jacksonville over legislation suggesting businesses must use preferred pronouns in order to provide a “welcoming” environment.
Under Jacksonville’s human rights ordinance (HRO), failing to use requested pronouns could be deemed as discrimination against people who identify as nonbinary, gender-fluid, or transgender.
But in September, the city backed down from the fight, agreeing to give the Queen of Angels Catholic Store a “religious exemption” from the measure, an attorney for the bookstore told The Epoch Times.
So, at least for now, the bookstore owner is able to continue to share her religious beliefs on her website—that God created only men and women and that pronouns should align with biology.
Around the state and across the country, other cities are adopting similar legislation requiring businesses to affirm gender identity. At least 10 Florida cities have similar regulations that offer protection from discrimination for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender-identifying people, including Tampa, Orlando, Gainesville, and Key West.
Most for-profit businesses are not granted religious exemptions from those “anti-discrimination” ordinances, regardless of the religious beliefs of the business owners.
Christie DeTrude, the owner and operator of the Catholic bookstore in Jacksonville, filed a lawsuit against the city in February over concerns about how the local HRO could affect her ability to share principles of her faith in her store and on the business website.
She worried the ordinance would force her to act and speak in ways that were in direct opposition to her religious beliefs. And that, she said, would be a violation of her First Amendment rights.
The city’s long-standing human rights ordinance was updated in 2020 by the Jacksonville City Council to require businesses to provide a “welcoming” environment to customers and employees in a way that affirms their gender identities, including the use of their preferred pronouns.
The ordinance defines “discrimination” as a “difference in treatment because of race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, pregnancy, disability, marital status, or familial status, where the difference is not justified by business necessity or is not a bona fide qualification.”
Fines imposed on businesses for violations of the HRO “shall not exceed $250 per day for a first violation and shall not exceed $500 per day for a repeat violation,” according to the ordinance.
Free to Share Religious Beliefs?
Ms. DeTrude heard about the HRO updates from customers and other business owners, she said.Then, she saw other Jacksonville businesses displaying “pronoun badges” to acknowledge their support for the updated requirements, she said. And she observed their willingness to use customers’ preferred pronouns, even if they were inconsistent with biology, something she’s not willing to do, she said.
Because Ms. DeTrude publishes her religious beliefs on the store’s website—that “God created man and woman” and gender is inseparable from biology—she worried the city government might react by issuing citations or levying fines.
“We’ve always shared the Catholic faith in the store, and I explained the Church’s teachings on gender [on the store website] and started to get the sense that I might be violating this law,” she said.
“The Catholic perspective maintains that an individual’s sex and gender are not merely subjective choices but are reflective of God’s deliberate creation, designating each person as a son or daughter,” Kathleen Bagg, director of communications for The Diocese of St. Augustine, told The Epoch Times.
Despite the Queen of Angels Catholic Store being a “religious business,” it’s a for-profit bookstore with no ties to The Diocese of St. Augustine or any other Catholic church. Ms. DeTrude wasn’t sure she'd qualify for a religious exemption under Jacksonville’s new human rights ordinance.
She reached out to attorneys with the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) in Dec. 2022 to discuss her situation. ADF is a conservative legal advocacy and lobbying group that fights for the inclusion of Christian practices and beliefs in schools and government.
Even though she is against the use of pronouns that do not correlate to traditional biology, the store has welcomed customers of all backgrounds, Ms. DeTrude said. She refers to customers by their first names in situations where she might be unsure about their preferred pronouns, she said.
That aligns with Catholic beliefs, Ms. Bagg confirmed.
The Catholic Church, she said, “emphasizes the importance of responding with charity and compassion, guiding individuals on their journey to understanding how their life reflects the love of God with integrity.”
Still, Ms. Detrude feared her pronoun policy—in her store and on her website—could draw government action, even though she’s never received any complaints, she said.
Other businesses in the city have been charged with violations, Hal Frampton, senior counsel with ADF, told The Epoch Times. But because Ms. DeTrude’s case was settled out of court, the firm hadn’t completed legal discovery to determine the details.
“What we do know is that the city is actively enforcing the law and that businesses like Christie’s shouldn’t have to wait for the government to come around and to be the subject of enforcement action in order to vindicate their constitutional rights,” Mr. Frampton said.
Now that the city has decided that her store is exempt as a “religious organization” under city law and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, Ms. DeTrude is free to act on and publish content about her business policy regarding pronouns without fear of repercussions.
“It’s a great victory for religious business owners like Christie’s,“ Mr. Frampton said, ”because normally, there’s a lot of resistance to characterizing for-profit businesses like the bookstore as exempt religious organizations—even when they have a distinctly religious character as Christie’s bookstore obviously does.
“So we’re very pleased to see the city coming to an agreement that, even though it’s for profit, even though it’s not formally affiliated with the church, it clearly has a religious character and qualifies as a religious organization.”
Constitutional ‘Defects’
If a business owner “believe[s] that there’s a constitutional defect worth challenging that’s really affecting the person’s business,” ADF would not rule out taking on that case, too, Mr. Frampton said.“As we put in the lawsuit, I think there are still constitutional problems applying the law to a non-religious business to compel their speech or to prevent them from speaking freely about gender and human sexuality issues or any number of other issues,” he said.
Similar measures are popping up all over the country with “constitutional defects” regarding First Amendment rights, he said.
Ms. DeTrude is just relieved her freedom of speech at her business seems protected for now.
“It should be a free country,“ she said. ”We should be free to disagree. And we should be able to say what we want without fear of punishment by the government.”
