Florida cities race to save rainbow crosswalks as the state’s deadlines for removal loom

FT. LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — An emergency city meeting is set for Wednesday evening in the south Florida city of Fort Lauderdale as a battle to save so-called rainbow crosswalks from being sandblasted or painted over enters the 11th hour with removal deadlines looming.

Communities across Florida are being ordered to remove them by early next month by the state, which is threatening to withhold millions of dollars in state funding if the cities don’t comply. Many of the brightly colored street crossings are meant to celebrate gay rights and LGBTQ pride, while others are tributes to Black people and police.

Miami Beach has been given a Sept. 4 deadline to remove its rainbow crosswalk on Ocean Drive — a deadline similar to those given to communities across Florida.

“They can’t strip away our pride and they can’t strip away our values of inclusivity,” Miami Beach Commissioner Alex Fernandez told The Associated Press in an interview this week.

Fernandez plans to raise the possibility of an appeal at a Sept. 3 city meeting, one day before the state’s deadline. He sees the crosswalk as a symbol of safety for not only the LGBTQ community, but other residents as well.

“When the gay community is safe, the broader community is safe as well,” he said.

Among the first crossings to be removed was a rainbow-colored crossing marking the 2016 massacre outside the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, where 49 people were gunned down. It was painted over in the middle of the night by work crews, angering community members.

Removal of the Pulse crossing put the dispute in a spotlight. It happened several weeks after a July 1 directive from U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who gave U.S. governors 60 days to identify what he called safety improvements.

“Roads are for safety, not political messages or artwork,” Duffy has said.

Duffy “has made every state receiving federal dollars responsible for identifying hazards on their roads,” the Federal Highway Administration said in a statement to The Associated Press.

So far, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has been the first U.S. governor to aggressively carry out the federal guidance.

“We will not allow our state roads to be commandeered for political purposes,” DeSantis said recently on X.

A statement from the Florida Department of Transportation said the agency has a duty “to ensure the safety and consistency of public roadways and transportation systems.”

“That means ensuring our roadways are not utilized for social, political, or ideological interests,” it said.

Efforts to remove the artwork are “clearly an anti-LGBTQ push on behalf of both the federal government and the copycat version from the state government,” said Rand Hoch, founder of the Palm Beach County Human Rights Council.

“They’re basically blackmailing municipalities, counties and states by saying ‘if you don’t do this, we’re going to withhold funding,’” Hoch said. “It’s absolutely ridiculous.”

Despite the directive from the U.S. transportation secretary, there’s no indication of any widespread actions to remove rainbow crossings outside of Florida. The Sunshine State is often the vanguard nationwide in fights over what some call the culture wars of politics. Those include battles over the removal of library books deemed inappropriate by DeSantis and other Republicans.

In Key West, state transportation officials said that if pavement markings in its historic downtown are not removed by Sept. 3, “the Florida Department of Transportation will remove them by any appropriate method necessary without further notice.” In a letter to Key West’s city manager, federal authorities also threatened the “immediate withholding” of state funds if it finds “additional violations.”