In the summer of 1984, Rand Hoch finished clerking for a prominent Palm Beach County law firm and was offered a job after finishing law school—a rare guarantee for graduates. There was just one problem.
“I’m in the office with the managing partner,” says Hoch, “and I say to him, ‘How is my being gay going to affect my becoming a partner years down the road?’”
When he saw the color drain from his face, Hoch realized the partner didn’t know he was gay. The partner meekly responded that it shouldn’t be an issue, but when Hoch later called the firm to follow up on the job offer, he was told that no offer had been made.
“I [realized] there’s no federal law, no state law, no local law [protecting me],” says Hoch. “Everything they did, discriminating against me solely on the basis of my sexual orientation, was perfectly legal.” There still is no federal law that protects the LGBTQ+ community from discrimination.
Hoch went on to become a successful mediation lawyer, and even became Palm Beach County’s first openly gay judge. But he describes his experience with discrimination as a “life-changer,” and the defining moment that spurred his founding of the Palm Beach County Human Rights Council (PBCHRC), a nonprofit dedicated to protecting the rights of the LGBTQ+ community that has helped pass more than 150 pieces of legislation in Palm Beach County that prohibit discrimination of LGBTQ+ people in housing, employment, insurance and more.
Now, after more than 30 years of progress, the legal protections that Hoch and the HRC fought for are less secure than ever.
Hoch attributes the rise in hostility toward the LGBTQ+ community in part to President Donald Trump’s first presidential run, specifically his 2015 announcement speech when he demonized Mexicans crossing the American border. “That opened the floodgates for people to be open about their hatred of minority groups,” says Hoch. “Things changed with Trump, and they got worse with DeSantis.”
Since 2021, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration has passed legislation that prohibits the inclusion of sexual orientation and gender identity in the classroom, bans gender-affirming care for minors, and allows health care providers and insurers to deny coverage to LGBTQ+ individuals. Rights that the PBCHRC had previously thought secure are no longer so, and the organization is now on its back foot in the fight for equality.
“We’ve always been very proactive,” says Hoch. “Now we’re reacting, and we’re seeing what we can do.”
Some work by the PBCHRC is even being actively undone. In 2020, the PBCHRC urged Boca Raton and other municipalities to repeal a law they helped pass that bans conversion therapy—a controversial method of “curing” a child’s sexual orientation—after the ban was challenged by a right-wing group and deemed unconstitutional by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. Though a seemingly counterintuitive move, by repealing the ban, the PBCHRC prevented the case going before the United States Supreme Court, which could have resulted in conversion therapy bans nationwide to be repealed.
“We didn’t want to be an avenue for someone else to take this case to the United States Supreme Court,” says Hoch.
Bigotry toward the LGBTQ+ community extends beyond the courtroom, too. In Delray Beach, two individuals who burned their tires over the rainbow Pride Streetscape that the PBCHRC and AIDS Healthcare Foundation donated to the city were given lenient punishments and not charged with hate crimes, despite the symbolism of the attacks. Hoch, as a former judge, couldn’t make sense of the ruling. “If somebody had served time in jail, even a week, it would be somewhat of a deterrent,” he says.
To Hoch, the rulings in these cases and others, along with the legislative attacks and the rise of “parental rights” groups that have contributed to the banning of countless books—including those with LGBTQ+ characters—from schools, hint at a troubling future for his community.
“This should not be the trend that our nation is moving forward to,” says Hoch. “But I can’t get cynical. … We still have to keep moving forward.
“We just need to be our authentic selves and get out there and change the hearts and minds of individuals in our circles of friends. But if we’re waiting for the legislature or the courts, that’s a whole different story.”
This article is from the April 2025 issue of Boca magazine. For more like this, click here to subscribe to the magazine.
