Background:

Orlando Senator Gary Siplin was hoping his bill on britches would pass before the end of this year’s legislative session. It would put in place a statewide public school dress code and ban pants and shorts worn below the waist. Students who violate the rules could be suspended. “We don’t want a distraction in the school system when they have to look at g-strings and the pants down. We want the kids to focus in on educating themselves, so they can matriculate through the education process and get a job and be a taxpayer, not a tax burden,” Senator Siplin said.

As San Diego City Beat remarked, this bill suffers a particularly harsh degree of ridiculosity in its narrowness.

Not to worry, though. Apparently Siplin has withdrawn the bill.

According to the Herald Tribune:

Students: Showing your underwear at school may not pass your school’s code of conduct, but it won’t be a violation of state law. Sen. Gary Siplin, D-Orlando, agreed to withdraw his last-minute “Pull up your britches” amendment in a Senate education committee meeting — but not until both he and former school teacher Sen. Larcenia Bullard, D-Miami, offered a lesson to a group of students in the audience. Siplin said he was worried about the professional prospects of “ladies with G-strings showing and guys walking down the halls trying to pull up their pants with one hand and carrying their bookbags in another hand.” Bullard said she was particularly horrified when she noticed recently that the fashion had extended beyond school to church. Both felt it important to tell the students that the fashion originated with criminals in prison.

example on display. daym!

Under Siplin’s bill — which he had proposed for several years running, with some variations — students caught exposing their underwear would be warned on the first offense, face a three-day suspension on the second offense, and be suspended for 10 days if caught for a third time. Some of the students — who were there to protest the committee chairman’s refusal to hear a bill on cyber-bullying — said they were not amused by the lecture on underwear. “I think what we’re here for is more important,” said Yudany Diaz, a Cape Coral sixth-grader there to support the anti-bullying bill.

thank God… now we can all freely drop dem britches!

Oh, wait.

Siplin, please try again.