When the Obama Administration hands down new rules mandating things like thoughtful treatment of undocumented immigrants or commonsense protection of waterways, there's only one thing for states like Florida to do: spend millions of taxpayer dollars suing the federal government.
So when the president made new rules around transgender student bathroom use, the question wasn't going to be if Florida and other states governed largely by "Christians" are going to take to the courts to fight it, but when.
On Monday, Governor Rick Scott said his administration is reviewing the new policy, which mandates that public schools stop discriminating against trans students, namely by making them use the bathroom corresponding to their sex at birth, not gender identity. He declined to give his own opinion on the issue, other than calling it "important."
“We just got notified of this, as you know, on Friday," he said. “This is an important issue, and so we're going to take our time to do a thorough review.”
Given the state's track record on social issues — Attorney General Pam Bondi's bizarrely dogged fight against same-sex marriage, anyone? — it seems likely the Scott administration would try to fight the rules somehow. But if some fight does take place at the state level, there's likely to be political fallout.
Scott was asked to comment on the issue after a press conference at Clearwater Marine Aquarium in which he touted the state's record tourism numbers. In the first quarter of 2016 alone, 30 million people visited the state of Florida, and 2015 was also a record year. Scott touted those numbers as key in creating jobs for the state.
It's unclear whether economics will be a factor as state officials weigh how to respond to the mandate.
We're going to go ahead and say they probably should be.
After all, after North Carolina passed its draconian anti-trans law earlier this year (Florida has considered a similar one for two years in a row now), the state faced rough economic consequences, with PayPal and other companies pulling out of the state in protest.
Tourism would be a pretty easy target for a boycott. And those jobs Scott's always talking about bringing might not come here; companies want to attract good workers, and being good at what you do has nothing to do with your gender identity or that of your kids, who would be most impacted — positively, unless your kid's a sad little bully — by the new rules.
When asked, Scott indicated Monday he had no idea whether consideration of potential economic consequences of openly bigoted policies would factor into the state's actions.
“It's an important issue, this issue," he said when asked about it. "The federal government just came up on Friday. We're going to go through it.”
This article appears in May 12-19, 2016.