Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (pictured here in October) signed the anti-DEI law that Delray Beach officials say prohibits them from holding cultural celebrations, like a St. Patrick’s Day parade.
Alex Wong/Getty Images
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Alex Wong/Getty Images
One of the first casualties of a new Florida law that prohibits taxpayer dollars from being spent on diversity initiatives is the St. Patrick’s Day parade in a beach town that has celebrated its Irish American community for nearly 60 years.
The city of Delray Beach announced this week that it is canceling its popular St. Patrick’s Day festivities, in accordance with a new law that takes effect January 1. The city will also withdraw its sponsorship of LGBTQ pride celebrations in June, officials said.
The law, backed by Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, is part of the state’s ongoing crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives that the governor has called discriminatory and which he says have “no place” in public institutions.
The city attorney for Delray Beach, a southeast Florida community with scenic beaches and a historic downtown, told the mayor that any government-sponsored celebration of culture, ethnicity or heritage that is not a national holiday (eg: Independence Day) could violate the new anti-DEI law. So, Mayor Tom Carney said, he made the difficult decision to cancel one of the city’s biggest events of the year.
In recent years, the parade, an annual event since 1970, has wound its way through downtown Delray Beach with spectators lining several people along the route. Local businesses and organizations sponsored floats and giveaways. School bands played as they marched through the streets. Attendees included members of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, the largest and oldest Irish Catholic organization in the country.
“I said it’s ingrained in Delray’s DNA and I really mean it. It’s one of our signature events,” Carney, a Republican, told NPR.
The mayor said he hopes the city can find a way forward and a way to preserve the event.
If a private sponsor volunteered to take over the St. Patrick’s Day parade or June Pride celebrations, Carney said, the city would happily hand over the reins and support the continuation of those festivities.
“We should celebrate these kinds of events because in this country people can organize these events. In other countries you can’t do that. We have great freedoms here,” he said. “And if the community wants something and it’s not against public policy, I would support them doing it if they’re using private funds. If we can do it, we should do it.”
Carney, who is of Irish descent, said the parade was organized privately until about eight years ago – so returning to a private sponsorship model would be a callback to the parade’s origins. His own family, he said, helped keep the parade going in the 1980s and 1990s.
Delray Beach officials said they have been inundated with emails, calls and social media messages from constituents upset about the removal of decades-long community celebrations.
“It was kind of a call to action for me,” Carney said. “The community really wants to have it, so we should go ahead and have it, we just need to get it with private funding.”
The governor, meanwhile, accused Delray Beach of using the new anti-DEI measure as a weapon to make a political point. DeSantis said the city was “engaging in ‘malicious compliance'” in a post he made to X after the city’s cancellation announcement.
“What they are doing is not required by Florida law,” the governor wrote. “This is just an attempt to make a political point – one that the mainstream media will no doubt try to amplify. We’ve seen these stunts over the years. Rinse and repeat.”
The mayor said the city was just trying to avoid trouble with the law. The measure, SB1134, asserts that any official who violates this provision could face civil or legal consequences.
“The legislation has unintended consequences. The governor may sincerely believe what he believes and I take him at his word; our city attorney came to a different conclusion,” Carney said. “I’ll leave it at that.”
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