A retired teacher was sentenced on Wednesday to five years in prison for threatening in obscenity-filled voicemails to harm a federal judge in Florida who had rejected a challenge to the state’s so-called “don’t say gay” law restricting classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity.
U.S. District Judge William Jung in Tampa sentenced Stephen Thorn, 66, to the maximum sentence possible after he pleaded guilty in May to a single threat charge. The sentence was twice as long as prosecutors had sought.
Thorn’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment. In a letter filed in court, Thorn apologized, saying he “rashly and angrily” over-reacted after reading a news story about the judge’s ruling.
Prosecutors in court papers said the case was an example of the rising numbers of threats against federal judges nationally, a trend they attributed to how judicial opinions are viewed in an increasingly ideological country.
Serious threats against federal judges rose to 457 in fiscal year 2023, which ended on Sept. 30, from 224 in fiscal 2021, the U.S. Marshals Service says. The phenomena was documented in a Reuters investigation this year.
Prosecutors did not identify the judge in Thorn’s case by name. But court filings specify his voicemails related to a 2022 ruling issued by U.S. District Judge Wendy Berger in Orlando, an appointee of Republican former President Donald Trump.
Berger in that ruling dismissed a lawsuit by LGBTQ students, their families and civil rights groups seeking to stop the Florida measure from being implemented after Republican Governor Ron DeSantis signed it into law earlier that year.
The Florida measure, formally called the Parental Rights in Education Act, bars classroom instruction in public schools on sexual orientation or gender identity for children in kindergarten through third grade, or from about ages 5-9.
It also prohibits such teaching that “is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate” for students in other grades.
In his voicemails, Thorn, who is gay, said the judge had no idea what LGBTQ children go through and was “basically giving a green light for them to be thought of as second-class citizens and bullied.”
Thorn said he had looked up where the judge, her husband and two children lived and said the judge was “very easy to track.”
“Let’s see how you would like it if somebody endangered your children in school or your grandchildren in school,” Thorn said. “You are an embarrassment to the judicial system.”
Berger did not respond to a request for comment.
Florida in March reached a settlement in related litigation over its law that grants teachers freedom to discuss sexual orientation and gender identity while also shielding the youngest students from those topics.
