A religious bookstore’s plea for protection from Jacksonville’s anti-discriminatory human rights ordinance has hit a legal roadblock, but a judge could still decide the company is exempt from the law anyway.
Chief US District Judge Timothy Corrigan dismissed a lawsuit by the Queen of Angels Catholic Bookstore but gave the business until July 7 to file a new version of its complaint.
The lawsuit argued the city’s ordinance would violate the privately owned, for-profit store’s free-speech rights if it prevented employees from being required to refer to transgender patrons by pronouns matching their gender at birth.
The store asked for an injunction preventing the city from issuing citations — something the city hasn’t done since the law was updated in 2020 — but Corrigan decided “at this point there is too much uncertainty” to expect the store would prove its case.
Instead, the judge told lawyers on both sides to develop arguments about a question that was raised in a hearing last month but never answered: whether the store fits the rarely-used standard for a “religious corporation.”
The HRO exempts religious organizations, like churches, and does the same for religious corporations, associations or societies, borrowing the terms from federal law.
But lawyers arguing over the bookstore struggled to find earlier court cases that involved a religious corporation, leaving questions unanswered about how courts understand the term.
“If this isn’t a religious corporation, what in the world would it be?” Corrigan asked attorneys during a hearing in May.
If the religious exemption applies to the bookstore, the HRO’s rule on gender identity and sexual orientation policies “does not pertain” to the business, the judge wrote.
Calling that question “a threshold issue,” Corrigan told attorneys for the store to file a motion for a summary judgment deciding the case by July 28, with the city filing an answer by Aug. 25. The bookstore would be allowed to answer the defense by Sept. 1, but after that would leave the decision in the judge’s hands.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Jacksonville bookstore’s pronoun lawsuit tossed; religious out possible