ron desantis – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Florida Health Dept. Lawyer: I Quit Rather Than Carry Out DeSantis’ Censorship Threats

from the yes,-the-governor-is-trying-to-censor-speech dept

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a government official go from sending a clearly censorial First Amendment-violating threat letter to quitting his job to telling a court, “I was pressured to do that and I resigned so that I wouldn’t do that again” so quickly.

Last week, we wrote about the fairly notable ruling in Florida, where federal judge Mark Walker included the classic line: “To keep it simple for the State of Florida: it’s the First Amendment, stupid.”

A group was purchasing airtime for TV commercials in support of a Florida ballot initiative that would protect women’s autonomy in dealing with issues related to pregnancy. Florida’s Department of Health sent a letter, signed by its General Counsel John Wilson, to the TV stations, claiming that airing the commercial could violate the state’s “sanitary nuisance” laws, normally used for getting property owners to clean up a leaking septic tank. At least one TV station then refused to air the ad in question in response to the letter.

The non-profit that bought the ad time sued, and the judge noted (quite easily) that this was about as obvious and blatant a violation of the First Amendment as anyone could remember.

We noted in our original article that Wilson (whose signature appeared on the letter) had already resigned a day after the letter was sent. He told the media that his “conscience” couldn’t allow him to stay.

Late last week, he went a step further and filed an affidavit with the court saying that Ron DeSantis’ office had drafted the letter and told him to send it, which he did. But he resigned when they asked him to follow through with more such letters and to retain lawyers to go after the TV stations who still ran the ad.

On October 3, 2024, in my official capacity as General Counsel, | sent the letters referenced in paragraph 4 of Plaintifl’s complaint.

I received drafts of the letters directly from Sam Elliot, Assistant General Counsel for the Executive Office of the Governor, earlier that day.

I did not draft the letters or participate in any discussions about the letters prior to October 3, 2024.

Ryan Newman, General Counsel for the Executive Office of the Governor, and Jed Doty, Deputy General Counsel for the Executive Office of the Governor, directed me to send them under my name and on the behalf of the Florida Department of Health.

On October 10, 2024, I resigned from my position as General Counsel in lieu of complying with directives from Newman and Doty to send out further correspondence to the media outlets, similar to the October 3, 2024 letters.

On October 10, 2024, prior to my resignation, I was directed by Mr. Newman to execute contracts for outside counsel to be retained by the Department to assist with enforcement proceedings pursuant to the October 3, 2024 letters.

This should be a huge fucking scandal. This is from the very same party that has falsely accused the Biden White House of “censorship” for simply sending reports of possible misinformation to social media companies and asking them if it violated their policies. This is from the very same party that passed laws to force social media companies to host speech, which they claimed was necessary to “support free speech.”

Yet, here they are issuing literally direct threats to TV stations, demanding they not air political ads from their political opponents. It’s one of the most blatant attacks on the First Amendment we’ve seen by government officials in some time. And it’s getting very little attention.

Anyway, kudos to Wilson for at least being willing to admit that this was bad and refusing to follow through on further actions here. It would have been nice if he’d never agreed to send the original letters at all.

Either way, with his affidavit, Floridians Protecting Freedom (the plaintiff in the case and the purchaser of the ads) has now dismissed its claims against Wilson directly. However, it will continue to move forward with the case against State Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo.

In light of the affidavit of former Florida Department of Health General Counsel John Wilson attached as Exhibit A to this notice, which explains the circumstances in which Mr. Wilson was directed to sign his name on the October 3 letter at issue in this case, Plaintiff has determined that it is unnecessary to pursue individual capacity claims against Defendant Wilson.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, abortion, abortion rights, florida, free speech, john wilson, political advertising, resignation, ron desantis
Companies: floridians protecting freedom

‘To Keep It Simple… It’s the First Amendment, Stupid’: Judge Slams Florida’s Attempt To Censor Abortion Initiative Ads

from the judicial-clarity dept

It’s not unheard of for us, or other publications, to paraphrase what a court ruling says at times. This time, however, the quote in the headline is actually 100% a direct quote from Judge Mark Walker, the Chief Judge of the Northern District of Florida federal court in a ruling against the state of Florida.

Here’s the full quote:

To keep it simple for the State of Florida: it’s the First Amendment, stupid.

To be clear, Florida’s legislature and Ron DeSantis — despite claiming to be big “free speech” supporters — have shown themselves to be somewhat confused about how the First Amendment works. Over the last few years, we’ve covered multiple things done by the governor and the legislature that required courts to step in and explain the First Amendment.

And here we are again.

The background here is pretty straightforward. This year, in Florida, there’s a ballot initiative in the state that would amend the state’s Constitution to say that no law can restrict abortion “before viability” or when a healthcare provider deems it necessary. The group backing the ballot, Floridians Protecting Freedom, created some 30-second commercials and bought some airtime on TV networks promoting the initiative.

Then, John Wilson, the general counsel of Florida’s Department of Health, sent a fucked up letter to the stations running the ads. The letter claimed that the ads violated the state’s “sanitary nuisance” laws, which normally are used to deal with things like overflowing septic tanks or improper garbage disposals.

Claiming that a political ad violates that law is so obviously thuggish, censorial bullshit that (1) the lawyer who sent it, John Wilson, then resigned and admitted that his conscience couldn’t let him continue in that job after sending such a threat letter and (2) FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel issued a reminder that broadcasters have a First Amendment right to air what they want, and “threats against broadcast stations for airing content that conflicts with the government’s views are dangerous and undermine the fundamental principle of free speech.”

Floridians Protecting Freedom went to court on Wednesday with a complaint calling out how egregious the threats are. The complaint asked for a declaratory judgment that the letters violate the First Amendment, and for an injunction against the government to stop such letters from being sent going forward.

Just one day later, the court did exactly that. Here’s the longer version of the quote above:

Plaintiff’s argument is correct. While Defendant Ladapo refuses to even agree with this simple fact, Plaintiff’s political advertisement is political speech—speech at the core of the First Amendment. And just this year, the United States Supreme Court reaffirmed the bedrock principle that the government cannot do indirectly what it cannot do directly by threatening third parties with legal sanctions to censor speech it disfavors. The government cannot excuse its indirect censorship of political speech simply by declaring the disfavored speech is “false.” “The very purpose of the First Amendment is to foreclose public authority from assuming a guardianship of the public mind through regulating the press, speech, and religion.” Thomas v. Collins, 323 U.S. 516, 545 (1945) (Jackson, J., concurring). “In this field every person must be his own watchman for truth, because the forefathers did not trust any government to separate the true from the false for us.” Id. To keep it simple for the State of Florida: it’s the First Amendment, stupid.

It then goes through a full explanation of just how stupid all this is. Florida’s argument is dismissed as “nonsense.”

At the hearing, Defendant led with the argument that laws of general applicability are immune from First Amendment challenge. Nonsense. The line of cases Defendant cites to support this dubious argument are readily distinguishable from this case. Defendant’s cases addressed a different issue—namely, whether enforcement of a law of general applicability against the press, which incidentally affects the press’s ability to gather and report the news, offends the First Amendment. See, e.g., Cohen v. Cowles Media Co., 501 U.S. 663, 669 (1991); Villieux v. Nat’l Broad. Co., 206 F.3d 92 (1st Cir. 2000); Food Lion v. Cap. Cities/ABC, 194 F.3d 505 (4th Cir. 1999). That is not this case. The issue here is whether the State can censor core political speech under the guise that the speech is false and implicates public health concerns. When state action “burdens a fundamental right such as the First Amendment, rational basis yields to more exacting review.” NAACP v. City of Philadelphia, 834 F.3d 435, 443 (3d Cir. 2016). With limited exceptions not applicable here,4 a government restriction on speech is subject to strict scrutiny if it is content based. Reed v. Town of Gilbert, 576 U.S. 155, 163 (2015).

Footnote 4 also does a good job explaining how there are limited exceptions to the First Amendment, but there’s no way that these ads fit into those categories:

A few “limited categories of speech are traditionally unprotected—obscenity, fighting words, incitement, and the like.” Honeyfund.com, Inc. v. Governor, 94 F.4th 1272, 1277 (11th Cir. 2024) (quoting Brown v. Ent. Merchs. Ass’n, 564 U.S. 786, 791 (2011)). “But what counts as unprotected speech starts and ends with tradition—‘new categories of unprotected speech may not be added to the list by a legislature that concludes certain speech is too harmful to be tolerated.’ ” Id. But Defendant has not demonstrated that the political speech at issue falls within any of these categories. It is not commercial speech subject to a more relaxed standard permitting some government regulation, nor is it obscene, nor is it inciting speech that will imminently lead to harm to the government or the commission of a crime.

Defendant argues this is dangerous and misleading speech that could cause pregnant women harm in Florida. But there is no “general exception to the First Amendment for false statements.” United States v. Alvarez, 567 U.S. 709, 718 (2012) (plurality opinion). Falsity alone does not bring speech outside the First Amendment absent some other traditionally recognized, legally cognizable harm. Id. at 718–722. That is because “it is perilous to permit the state to be the arbiter of truth.” Alvarez, 567 U.S. at 752 (Alito, J., dissenting).

Defendant seeks to fit a square peg into a round hole by suggesting that Plaintiff’s speech is unprotected because it poses an “imminent threat” to public health. But this argument fails too. Speech is unprotected as an “imminent threat” when it incites or produces imminent lawless action, or poses a clear and present danger by bringing about the “substantive evils” that the government has a right to prevent, like obstacles to military efforts, obscenity, acts of violence, and charges to overthrow the government. Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444, 447 (1969); Near v. Minnesota ex rel. Olson, 283 U.S. 697, 716 (1931). But there is no suggestion that Plaintiff’s ad would bring about the “substantive evils” that the Supreme Court has recognized, nor is there any suggestion that Plaintiff’s ad would cause individuals to take any imminent lawless action.

The court then explains how this law doesn’t come even remotely close to passing the high bar for strict scrutiny. Again, some of the meatiest bits are in the footnotes. Florida tried to claim that the recently decided Vullo case (in which a unanimous Supreme Court rejected efforts by government officials to coerce third parties into punishing people for their speech) didn’t apply because the speech here wasn’t protected by the First Amendment. The court explains that this is not how this works:

When asked why this case was not governed by Vullo, Defendant’s response was that Vullo concerned the state exercising its regulatory authority “in an effort to stop the NRA from engaging in constitutionally protected speech.” But “the difference here,” he argued, is that “the specific words being expressed” in this case don’t fall “within the ambit of the First Amendment.” ECF No. 23 at 36–37. But that is beside the point. In Bantam Books, on which Vullo relied, the state threatened enforcement on the basis that the speech was allegedly obscene—which the Supreme Court acknowledged was “not within the area of constitutionally protected speech or press.” 372 U.S. at 59, 65. Here, as discussed above, Defendant has not even shown that the speech falls within one of the “traditionally unprotected” categories, let alone that such a distinction would remove this case from the ambit of Vullo and Bantam Books.

Furthermore, the court notes that these threats from the Florida government are unconstitutional under two separate analyses: for both being an unconstitutional coercion in an attempt to suppress speech and for viewpoint discrimination, both of which are forbidden under the First Amendment.

The judge points out that if this was allowed to stand, the state could just deem any speech it dislikes a “sanitary nuisance” and threaten criminal charges if it wasn’t removed:

It is no answer to suggest that the Department of Health is merely flexing its traditional police powers to protect health and safety by prosecuting “false advertising”—if the State can rebrand rank viewpoint discriminatory suppression of political speech as a “sanitary nuisance,” then any political viewpoint with which the State disagrees is fair game for censorship. Moreover, the record demonstrates that Defendant has ample, constitutional alternatives to mitigate any harm caused by an injunction in this case. The State of Florida has actively undertaken its own anti-Amendment 4 campaign to educate the public about its view of Florida’s abortion laws and to correct the record, as it sees fit, concerning pro-Amendment 4 speech. The State can continue to combat what it believes to be “false advertising” by meeting Plaintiff’s speech with its own

And thus, Florida is “enjoined from taking any further actions to coerce, threaten, or intimate repercussions directly or indirectly to television stations, broadcasters, or other parties for airing Plaintiff’s speech, or undertaking enforcement action against Plaintiff for running political advertisements….”

This is a good, strong outcome, but it remains absolutely ridiculous that this situation happened in the first place. Again, the idea that the modern GOP supports “free speech” is laughable given continued actions like this one.

The modern GOP needs to be reminded time and time again, “it’s the First Amendment, stupid,” but they have made it clear that they don’t care. They will continue to take every action they can to suppress views they dislike, because shutting up critics and “owning the libs” is way more important to them than actually upholding the Constitution.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, abortion, ballot initiative, coercion, florida, florida department of health, john wilson, mark walker, political advertising, ron desantis

Florida Gov’t Sending Cops To Voter’s Houses To Intimidate Pro-Choice Ballot Measure Petition Supporters

from the fiefdom-intensifies dept

Well, here’s even more ugliness from America’s penis. The state of Florida — currently presided over by a bootlicker wearing boot lifts — has decided the best way to protect its war on women is to harass and intimidate residents who support reproductive rights.

Florida is reportedly sending police officers to the homes of people who signed a petition supporting an abortion rights ballot initiative.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s administration has begun investigating thousands of verified signatures that helped to put a state constitutional amendment protecting the right to abortion on the ballot in November. The amendment would overturn Florida’s current six-week abortion ban.

[…]

Multiple residents in Lee County have reported being visited by law enforcement following up on their petition signatures.

This is a bold [read: fascist] response to suspected petition fraud. Suspected fraud like this has almost always been handled in far less invasive fashion. At worst, it’s usually just a handful of subpoenas. In most cases, the state approaches the court to ask it to invalidate the ballot measure.

But in Florida, the new thing is sending investigators to people’s houses with a folder full of ballot supporters’ personal information. Here’s what Florida resident Isaac Menasche observed when a law enforcement officer showed up at his house to question him about his ballot measure signature.

“The experience left me shaken. What troubled me was he had a folder on me containing my personal information—about 10 pages. I saw a copy of my drivers license and copy of the petition I signed. It was obvious to me that a significant effort was exerted to determine if indeed I had signed the petition.”

If this seems melodramatic, ask yourself how you would respond if a law enforcement officer showed up at your house and started asking questions about your support for political issues and candidates — especially while flipping through some sort of dossier you’d rightfully be surprised to find the state had compiled on you.

This is definitely not normal behavior. State governments generally don’t handle questionable ballot initiatives this way. But Ron DeSantis doesn’t want his anti-abortion law undone by the will of the people. And that means the people supporting this measure must be oppressed, if not actually suppressed.

The petition for the ballot measure supporting abortion until viability cleared the 900,000 signature mark by over 100,000 signatures. With his petty fiefdom threatened, Governor DeSantis has weaponized the state’s law enforcement agencies to quell this particular dissent, as the Tampa Bay Times reports.

The officer’s visit appears to be part of a broad — and unusual — effort by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration to inspect thousands of already verified and validated petitions for Amendment 4 in the final two months before Election Day. The amendment would overturn Florida’s six-week abortion ban by proposing to protect abortion access in Florida until viability.

Since last week, DeSantis’ secretary of state has ordered elections supervisors in at least four counties to send to Tallahassee at least 36,000 petition forms already deemed to have been signed by real people.

Additionally, a spokesperson for the governor’s office said it would be referring this to the state’s Department of Law Enforcement. Whether or not that has happened yet is unclear. The DLE has so far refused to comment on this highly unusual move by the state government.

DeSantis and his supporters in the legislature aren’t willing to engage in fair fights. When opposition arises, DeSantis and his enablers are quick to suppress it. Case in point: the governor’s firing of district attorneys who opposed his unconstitutional mandates and tough-on-crime antics. Now, there’s this: blatant voter intimidation to salvage an abortion ban that a considerable number of state residents don’t support.

This isn’t outlier behavior. This is the Republican party in its current form. Donald Trump spent the weekend inciting violence if the election didn’t go his way and promising bloodshed to enforce his mass deportation plans. And we all know DeSantis and his office would never engage in tactics like these if the alleged fraudulent activity involved ballot measures or candidates DeSantis supports. This is just bog-standard evil. Unfortunately, it’s the banal evils that open the door for the more horrific evils — you know, things like genocide and mass imprisonment of the government’s enemies. This is just another Overton Window being opened to see what the masses are willing to tolerate from their government.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, democracy, florida, intimidation, police state, ron desantis

Florida The Latest State To Be Sued By Big Name Publishers Over Unconstitutional Book Bans

from the do-they-still-have-a-1st-amendment-in-florida? dept

Far too many states have decided to engage in censorship, urged on by an alarmingly large voting bloc that truly appears to be on the side of fascism, so long as that fascism appears to be on their side.

Since this is, for the moment, still the United States of America, home of several enshrined rights, most of these efforts have been scaled back, dismantled, or blocked completely following challenges in federal courts. Most, but not all. Some laws have survived, and those that have are likely going to be reviewed by a Supreme Court that has been deliberately stocked with the sort of people who think rights should be subservient to their favorite flavor of “conservatism.”

Fortunately, the burden of displacing these laws hasn’t been placed solely on residents of states run by bigoted lawmakers. Major publishers have stepped into the judicial breach. But this time, they’re using their litigation powers for good, rather than attempting to control access to literature by wielding their copyright law cudgels.

Multiple publishers have banded together once again to sue Florida over its censorial book-targeting laws. While not technically a book ban, the law accomplishes the same ends through slightly different means. But, at the end of the day, it’s still just censorship. And it’s still just as unconstitutional. Here’s Richard Luscombe, reporting for The Guardian from Miami, Florida.

“Florida HB 1069’s complex and overbroad provisions have created chaos and turmoil across the state, resulting in thousands of historic and modern classics, works we are proud to publish, being unlawfully labeled obscene and removed from shelves,” Dan Novack, vice-president and associate general counsel of Penguin Random House (PRH), said in a statement.

[…]

PRH is joined in the action by Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan Publishers, Simon & Schuster and Sourcebooks. The 94-page lawsuit, which also features as plaintiffs the Authors Guild and a number of individual writers, was filed in federal court in Orlando on Thursday.

The suit contends the book removal provisions violate previous supreme court decisions relating to reviewing works for their literary, artistic, political and scientific value as a whole while considering any potential obscenity; and seeks to restore the discretion “of trained educators to evaluate books holistically to avoid harm to students who will otherwise lose access to a wide range of viewpoints”.

The lawsuit targets “book removal provisions” that mainly target books kept in classes by teachers for access by their students, rather than school or other public libraries. Not that those entities aren’t affected. Books present in school libraries are also subject to challenges by state residents. But that’s the pretense that allows state government spokespeople to claim “book removal” mandates are not the same as “book bans.” After all, it’s not the government ordering removal. It’s simply schools and teachers responding to book challenges from other citizens.

“This is a stunt,” Florida Department of Education spokesperson Sydney Booker said in an email to The Hill. “There are no books banned in Florida. Sexually explicit material and instruction are not suitable for schools.”

In retrospect, I’m being far too fair to this government official. He doesn’t really respond to the lawsuit’s allegations. Instead, he crafts a new narrative that suggests the new law changes nothing about the long-held status quo. Sexually explicit material has never been suitable for schools. Therefore, the law being sued over is just… a redundancy?

Except that if it was the same as everything that’s come before it, librarians wouldn’t be pulling tons of books they’ve almost always felt comfortable giving students access to. And teachers wouldn’t be purging their classroom bookshelves of titles they’ve historically used for assigned reading or classroom instruction.

Since it went into effect last July, countless titles have been removed from elementary, middle and high school libraries, including American classics such as Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.

Contemporary novels by bestselling authors such as Margaret Atwood, Judy Blume and Stephen King have also been removed, as well as The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank’s gripping account of the Holocaust, according to the publishers.

The law prohibits books that “describe sexual content” from being made accessible to any student, whether they’re five or eighteen (the law regulates everything from kindergarten to 12th grade). It does not define the term “sexual content” with any specificity and the wording makes it clear that the context of the sexual content does not matter. Then it goes on to equate “sexual content descriptions” with pornography, which is already regulated and forbidden to be distributed to minors. And it goes without saying, no classroom or school library contains any actual pornography.

The first part of the law is so vague as to allow something as innocuous as the phrase “made love” to trigger the book removal process. The second part is redundant in the most stupid way — making something already illegal more illegal?

That’s the basis of the legal challenge [PDF] raised by the publishers, who note the poorly written, purely censorial law has already resulted in the removal of books long considered to be acceptable for most school-age readers. The plaintiffs want these two sections invalidated.

And they should be. They were clearly written by people blinded by their own bigotry — legislators who hope to purge the state’s schools of anything they don’t personally agree with. And they appear to be completely fine with the collateral damage caused by the badly written, unconstitutionally vague law — the disappearance of classic literature they’ve possibly even read and enjoyed themselves — so long as it definitely harms the stuff they hate.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, book ban, censorship, florida, free speech, lawsuit, ron desantis
Companies: harpercollins, hatchette, macmillan publishers, penguin random house, simon & schuster, sourcebooks

School President Throws Library Dean Under The Bus After Florida College’s LGBTQ-Books-In-A-Dumpster Dumpster Fire

from the both-a-coward-and-a-liar dept

The fallout came fast and hard for New College of Florida and its administrators after multiple videos were posted of books dealing mainly with sexual identity and race found filling a dumpster behind the school library.

The immediate reaction from the school’s spokesperson, Nathan Marks, was nonsensical. Marks claimed two things, neither of them believable. The first was that this was just routine periodical “pruning” of books that were too damaged or otherwise unneeded by the school. The second was that it was illegal to notify students, staff, or other entities that this purge was happening so that they might be able to rescue some of the books slated for destruction.

As to the first part of his claim, it was immediately apparent most books were neither damaged or old. Instead, they were books retained by the school’s now-defunct Gender and Diversity Center — something that was axed as soon as Governor DeSantis stocked the school board with his personal picks.

The second part was blatantly false. The school was permitted by law to sell or give away the books to anyone interested in them. In this case, it simply chose not to because the far right school board saw the books as garbage and treated them as such.

Now, the flailing is even worse. A steady stream of criticism has forced the college to react. And it has reacted in the worst way possible. The worst way is personified by school president Richard Corcoran, who has decided to pin all of the blame on someone who likely had no control over the purge pushed by the school board.

A New College of Florida library administrator has been placed on leave after thousands of books were found in a dumpster on campus, a university spokesperson confirmed to News Channel 8.

Shannon Hausinger, dean of the library, was placed on leave after “the library did not follow all of the state administrative requirements while conducting the routine disposition of materials,” the spokesperson said.

Maybe Hausinger agreed with the purge. Maybe she didn’t. Either way, Corcoran has made her the scapegoat.

But that’s not all he did. He claimed the public was too stupid to recognize what happened here. As is almost always the case when public leaders get caught doing things they shouldn’t, Corcoran has chosen to blame the media and anyone else who might have disagreed with this move.

“Unfortunately, much of the coverage has been sensationalized, catering to the narratives of our critics,” Corcoran wrote in the letter. “While the optics of seeing thousands of books in a dumpster are far from ideal, it is important to understand the disposition of materials is a necessary process in libraries, and ensures that our collection remains relevant, up-to-date, and in good condition for our community’s use.”

To put this politely, that’s bullshit. The school board — the same one that shut down the Gender and Diversity Center — had a hand in this. We know this because at least one board member has admitted as much. Christopher Rufo — a board member personally appointed by Ron DeSantis — took to ExTwitter to crow about this purge of LGBTQ content, saying the quiet part as loudly as he could.

If you can’t see/read the screenshot, it features several shots of these books in the dumpster, accompanied by Rufo’s statement:

We abolished the gender studies program. Now we’re throwing out the trash.

And here’s what Rufo said after taking the college board position:

Earlier this year, Florida governor Ron DeSantis appointed a new board majority, including me, to New College of Florida and tasked us with a simple, but audacious, mission: take over the failing school, bring in new leadership, and transform the institution into a liberal arts college in the classical tradition.

The move caused a firestorm. Conservatives cheered it on as an essential step in recapturing democratic institutions. Progressives denounced it as a violation of some principle or another. But, whatever your opinion, one thing is certain: the takeover of New College has changed the dynamics of America’s culture war and, if successful, will provide a model for conservatives across the nation.

None of this is addressed in the school president’s letter to the college’s staff. This unfortunate truth is simply ignored and spun to make it appear as though it’s just a misunderstanding that has been inflamed by careless reporting.

But that was never the case. This was always about a conservative-majority board inflicting its preferences on the college, starting with the gender studies program and culminating in the shocking display of contempt that is hundreds of gender and race-related books being consigned to a dumpster and hauled away before any collective effort could be made to rescue literary works DeSantis’ hand-picked board considers trash.

Filed Under: book bans, censorship, chris rufo, free speech, new college of florida, richard corcoran, ron desantis, shannon hausinger, stop woke act

One Part Of Florida’s Asinine ‘Stop WOKE’ Act Has Been Permanently Killed By A Federal Court

from the just-keep-losing,-losers dept

Good news for free speech enthusiasts. And that should be everyone in this nation, especially those living in Florida. And that goes for everyone who supports Governor Ron DeSantis and dumbass legislation like the “Stop WOKE Act.” Whether you like it or not, the First Amendment protects speech you disagree with, not just the stuff you like. And with part of the law permanently enjoined, perhaps your state will spend a little less of your money defending obviously unconstitutional laws.

Here’s more on the subject from David Harris of Law & Crime:

Judge Mark Walker of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida issued a permanent injunction, saying the law that bans diversity training in private workplaces “violates free speech rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.” The ruling follows a three-judge appeals court panel’s March decision that upheld Walker’s original injunction. The State of Florida did not oppose the motion to make the ruling permanent.

The order [PDF] putting the permanent injunction in place only runs two pages. Since the motion was unopposed, no further arguments were heard. At least this indicates the state can be taught, having lost twice in a row in its attempt to insert itself into conversations between private businesses and their employees.

The Eleventh Circuit Appeals Court had this to say about the law when it upheld the lower court’s decision in this lawsuit:

The State of Florida seeks to bar employers from holding mandatory meetings for their employees if those meetings endorse viewpoints the state finds offensive. But meetings on those same topics are allowed if speakers endorse viewpoints the state agrees with, or at least does not object to. This law, as Florida concedes, draws its distinctions based on viewpoint—the most pernicious of dividing lines under the First Amendment.

Apparently, the state realized it had no chance to impose its will on private businesses to control what topics they’re permitted to talk about. This followed a string of losses in the lower court — both in this lawsuit, which concerns private businesses and a similar constitutional challenge against the law’s application to public universities.

The lower court doesn’t like that lawsuit either and has already issued an injunction. That one is still being appealed by the state. Even though that lawsuit deals with a bit more gray-ish area of First Amendment law (the government placing speech restrictions on government employees), it seems likely this too will meet a similar fate when the Eleventh Circuit Appeals Court reviews it.

After all, the restrictions imposed here are similar to those targeting private companies. It’s going to take some very creative arguing to get around the point made by the district court in this devastating summary of that part of the law:

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen,” and the powers in charge of Florida’s public university system have declared the State has unfettered authority to muzzle its professors in the name of “freedom.” To confront certain viewpoints that offend the powers that be, the State of Florida passed the so-called “Stop W.O.K.E.” Act in 2022—redubbed (in line with the State’s doublespeak) the “Individual Freedom Act.” The law officially bans professors from expressing disfavored viewpoints in university classrooms while permitting unfettered expression of the opposite viewpoints.

The good news is the law is 50% dead. Hopefully, the Stop WOKE Act will be completely buried in the near future.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, florida, free speech, ron desantis, stop woke act
Companies: honeyfund

Florida’s Attorneys Continue To Blow Money Defending An Obviously Unconstitutional Law

from the well-it's-not-OUR-money dept

You just can’t tell Florida “no,” which is a bit ironic. The state obviously feels it can say “no” to all sorts of things, even if doing so means violating the Constitution.

Another dumbass bill written by dumbass legislators and signed into law by the state’s dumbass governor, Ron DeSantis, continue to bleed money from the state coffers despite being (1) fucking stupid and (2) unable to be enacted or enforced.

That’s the case with the “Stop WOKE Act,” which is another one of those performative bills where authors thought of the words first and worked their way back to an acronym. Before its rechristening as the just-as-stupid “Individual Freedom Act,” the act’s full name was “Stop Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees Act.”

This attempt to restrict speech was immediately hit with lawsuits and just as immediately hit with injunctions. In August 2022, a Florida federal court had this to say about the law:

In the popular television series Stranger Things, the “upside down” describes a parallel dimension containing a distorted version of our world. See Stranger Things (Netflix 2022). Recently, Florida has seemed like a First Amendment upside down. Normally, the First Amendment bars the state from burdening speech, while private actors may burden speech freely. But in Florida, the First Amendment apparently bars private actors from burdening speech, while the state may burden speech freely.

Believe it or not, that was the second injunction delivered against the law. The third injunction followed in November of that year, with this court saying even harsher things against the legislation, again using a popular cultural touchstone.

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen,” and the powers in charge of Florida’s public university system have declared the State has unfettered authority to muzzle its professors in the name of “freedom.” To confront certain viewpoints that offend the powers that be, the State of Florida passed the so-called “Stop W.O.K.E.” Act in 2022—redubbed (in line with the State’s doublespeak) the “Individual Freedom Act.” The law officially bans professors from expressing disfavored viewpoints in university classrooms while permitting unfettered expression of the opposite viewpoints.

Not satisfied with this string of losses, the state appealed both lawsuits. The first denial at the hands of the Eleventh Circuit Appeals Court arrived in March of this year. It was similarly dumbfounded by the obviously unconstitutional law and the state’s arguments in support of it.

[The state] says that even if speech defines the contours of the prohibition, so long as the resulting burden is on the conduct, that conduct is all the state is regulating. That, in turn, means the law does not regulate speech. Remarkable. Under Florida’s proposed standard, a government could ban riding on a parade float if it did not agree with the message on the banner. The government could ban pulling chairs into a circle for book clubs discussing disfavored books. And so on. The First Amendment is not so easily neutered.

The Eleventh Circuit handed down a second rejection two weeks later, while dispensing with yet another challenge of a lower court’s injunction. There’s absolutely no chance the Eleventh Circuit judges would be more accepting of the government’s identical arguments in a second lawsuit, but that didn’t stop the state from wasting money just to get hit with this judicial smackdown for pretending its appeal of a second district level loss was some sort of “emergency.”

The Clerk is DIRECTED to treat any motion for reconsideration of this order as a non-emergency matter.

The state currently has (at least) two losses on appeal in the Eleventh Circuit. How it expects any of those to turn out differently is something best left to the imagination of the state’s legal reps, who will certainly continue to cash checks their legal representation shouldn’t be allowed to write.

But persist they do, because the state says they must because the state is headed by a bunch of people who don’t care what it costs to own the libs, especially when it’s not actually coming out of their wallets. The futile march towards guaranteed losses continues, as Kayla Goggin reports for Courthouse News Service.

An attorney for the officials told a panel of the appeals court on Friday that the state’s interest in “the efficient and effective functioning of its educational institutions” and in “preserving public confidence in those institutions” outweighs the interest professors have in expressing their viewpoints and beliefs.

Attorney Charles Cooper of Cooper & Kirk urged the three-judge panel to toss out the injunction. Cooper said courts have repeatedly found that the state “can have a viewpoint and may insist that professors not espouse and endorse viewpoints that are contrary to the states.”

That is… some pretty bold stuff. I cannot wait to see the legal citations Charles Cooper offers in support of his assertion that courts have “repeatedly” found the state can control the speech of university professors. While it’s true certain government employees may have lower speech protections due to their government positions, that’s not nearly the same thing as the state proscribing what can or cannot be discussed in classrooms by educators.

And there’s nearly no court in the land willing to ratify the novel theory the government is allowed to restrict speech of employees to only ideas current government leaders agree with. If nothing else, the constantly shifting landscape of political opinions espoused by government leaders would make enforcement an impossibility. A regime change would basically make supporting ideas the current government likes illegal just because it doesn’t agree with the ideals of the party just voted out of power.

Given that the Eleventh Circuit has already rejected one appeal and put another on the back burner, it’s difficult to see this going the state’s way. But when you’re spending money that isn’t yours, even the longest shot is worth betting on.

Filed Under: 11th circuit, 1st amendment, florida, free speech, ron desantis, stop woke act

Florida Appeals Court Says The Right To Record Extends To Phone Calls With Cops

from the what-part-of-'public'-do-you-not-understand dept

Well, this ought to prompt another round of police-protecting legislation in Florida. Governor Ron DeSantis recently signed two bills into law — one that creates a 25-foot “no go” zone around police officers and one that strips police oversight boards of their independence. And that’s on top of the immediate effort made by the legislature in reaction to a recent court ruling that said the state’s victims’ rights law couldn’t be used to withhold names of officers who engaged in excessive force in “response” to alleged, mostly made-up “crimes” against them (contempt of cop, etc.).

This recent decision [PDF] from a Florida appeals court says the state’s two-party consent law for recordings doesn’t extend to public officials. And that means the five bogus wiretapping charges brought against Michael Waite for daring to record his conversations with cops are going to disappear. (h/t WFLA)

As we’re all well aware, wiretapping laws have been abused by cops for years in states with two-party consent laws. Multiple people have been arrested for filming their interactions with police officers and hit with bogus wiretapping charges because the officers did not “consent” to be recorded. Most of the resulting lawsuits have not delivered the results cops want. Instead, a majority of them have established precedent that says the First Amendment protects recordings of public officials.

That’s what has happened here. Rather than dismiss the charges voluntarily, the state chose to fight this in court. And now there’s precedent preventing officers from pulling this sort of bullshit in the future.

The backstory is this: Michael Waite is no fan of local law enforcement. According to court records, he had been involved in a long property boundary dispute with the sheriff’s office and other city employees. Waite called 911 and accused deputies of trespassing. He recorded the call and forwarded it to the sheriff’s office. Rather than do nothing, the sheriff’s office obtained an arrest warrant. This led to an altercation when officers served the warrant, resulting in battery charges that aren’t going to be dismissed.

The important thing is the precedent. The appeals court says there’s no expectation of privacy in carrying out public duties while utilizing public equipment, i.e., department-issued cell phones and landlines.

Here, Waite recorded a telephone conversation with Sergeant Blair. He subsequently emailed the audio recording to the CCSO to report what he believed to be police misconduct and requested an internal investigation. It was later discovered that Waite had similarly recorded four other conversations with CCSO deputies. Under these circumstances, it cannot be said that any of the deputies exhibited a reasonable expectation of privacy that society is willing to recognize.

Importantly, this is based on the record before us as there is no dispute that all conversations concerned matters of public business, occurred while the deputies were on duty, and involved phones utilized for work purposes. As such, Waite did not violate section 934.03(1)(a) when he recorded the conversations with the deputies, all of whom were acting in their official capacities at the time of the recordings, just as if he had the conversations face-to-face.

This all seems extremely obvious and yet it took a second court’s review of the case to make it clear enough that Florida law enforcement officers will understand it. And that probably means some legislator has already fired up Word and is crafting a law that will exempt state law enforcement from… well, the First Amendment, I guess. The ruling here cites plenty of local precedent about the right to record, but Florida’s always imaginative lawmakers are rarely deterred by things like years of case law or the US Constitution itself.

Filed Under: florida, michael waite, public officials, recording police, ron desantis, two party consent, wiretapping

DeSantis Signs Law Limiting Book Challenges After The Shitty People He Encouraged To Be Shitty Proved To Be Even Shittier Than He Thought They’d Be

from the well-well-well-if-it-isn't-the-consequences-of-my-own-actions dept

Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, and Florida’s legislature have combined forces to craft and pass some of the most unconstitutional laws ever written in the United States. A series of bad laws has led to series of injunctions from federal courts, including one that traveled all the way to the Supreme Court just to have the First Amendment reaffirmed by the top court in the land.

It’s a campaign of hate. The laws, without exception, target either people the governor and his legislative fanbois don’t like (a lot of this targets LGBTQ+ people) or people who don’t like DeSantis or his legislative fanbois (hence all the legislation targeting social media services which don’t find it all that profitable to host hateful content).

Like other states with the same set of bad ideas and worse legislators, Florida has turned libraries into battlefields where the First Amendment matters less than the petty outrage of people who can’t stand to have any ideas they don’t agree with given shelf space. Book challenges are the new normal in far too many places in the United States.

But Florida leads the way by a large margin. According to stats gathered by PEN America, Florida has served up more than three-quarters of the nation’s book bans over the last six months of 2023.

The vast majority of school book bans occurred in Florida, with 3,135 bans across 11 of the state’s school districts. A spokesperson with Florida’s Department of Education declined NPR’s request for comment.

Across the nation, 4,349 book bans were reported over that same period. And that six month period produced more book bans than the entirety of 2022.

Apparently, that’s beginning to be a bit of a problem for the state that leads the nation in book challenges. Realizing that most challenges are filed by just a handful of extremely petty people with far too much time and ideology on their hands (the NPR report notes a single Wisconsin parent was responsible for 444 book challenges), DeSantis is now trying to unreap at least part of the harvest he has sown.

Florida residents who don’t have children attending school will have significantly fewer chances to challenge books in local K-12 libraries under a new law signed Tuesday by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Meant to curb what lawmakers described as a “logistical nightmare” facing school districts flooded with requests to remove books, the policy marks an admission from Republican leaders that last year’s expansions to book challenge laws may have gone too far after national backlash from free speech groups and even some conservatives.

We’ll see if this actually deters the book ban overachievers from filing challenges as quickly as they can change the To: field in their form letters. Somehow, I think this will just encourage a lot of “straw” challenges from people who either don’t exist or don’t realize some shitty sociopath is using their name to engage in ideological warfare with ideas and content they don’t like.

This would all be stupid enough if it weren’t for the statements made by DeSantis when signing this bill into law.

All of it is disingenuous. First, DeSantis pretends it isn’t just the shittiest members of his voter base that are responsible for having to legislate a claw-back on book challenges.

In backing the idea, DeSantis said Florida wants to stamp out frivolous challenges as “activists” from “all ends of the political spectrum” are objecting to “everything under the sun.”

It’s the Trumpian “fine people on both sides” tactic but in reverse. And it’s bullshit. Let’s go back and check the data gathered by PEN:

Those who ban books often cite “obscenity law and hyperbolic rhetoric about ‘porn in schools’ to justify banning books about sexual violence and LGBTQ+ topics (and in particular, trans identities),” the report says.

That doesn’t sound like “all ends of the political spectrum.” That sounds like one very narrow end of the political spectrum — the end containing the narrowest minds.

Then there’s this bit of chastisement, which should have provoked open laughter from every journalist in attendance:

“Schools are there to serve the community,” DeSantis said Monday during an event touting the legislation. “Schools are not there for you to try to go on some ideological joyride at the expense of our kids.”

Holy fuck, Ron! Your entire state is little more than an ideological joyride, at least since you’ve taken office. Your legislature — with few exceptions — does nothing more than craft more rides for your ideological playground. You and your buddies in the legislature directly encouraged this sort of bullshit from your constituents. And now you want to pretend you’re somehow above it all?!

You created this shitstorm, Ron. I guess we can all feel thankful you at least feel bad enough about it to show up with a tarp, even though pretty much everything is already covered in feces. But you should be fine moving forward. I would assume the legislators on your side of the aisle that approved this bill have used up whatever last vestiges of shame they contained. This isn’t a sign of hope. It’s just the last plateau before everything resumes its usual downhill course.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, book bans, florida, ron desantis

DeSantis Signs Bills To Create 25-Foot Halo Around Cops, Strip Oversight Boards Of Independence

from the lifted-shitheel-licks-boots dept

Here come more bad laws, courtesy of the Florida legislature — a government body that hasn’t met a right it isn’t willing to violate to further its bigoted agenda.

These laws won’t necessarily violate rights right out of the gate, but the potential is definitely there. Here’s Douglas Sole of the Tallahassee Democrat (it’s a newspaper name, not a political allegiance) with the latest legislative bad news:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed two bills Friday that he says will support law enforcement, but which critics warn will undermine the public’s ability to prevent police brutality and corruption.

“I don’t think there’s anyone that can match what we’ve done to protect the citizens of this state, but particularly to ensure that we respect and protect the men and women who wear the uniform,” DeSantis said at the bill signing event in St. Augustine, surrounded by uniformed officers and standing behind a lectern sign that said, “Supporting Law Enforcement.”

One bill (SB 184) creates a 25-foot “no-go” zone around first responders, including police. The other (HB 601) would limit what citizen police oversight boards can do, including investigating complaints of officer misconduct, and would require these panels to be re-established under county sheriffs and municipal police chiefs, who would appoint the members.

Ron, I don’t think anyone should “match” what you’ve done. And it’s certainly not being done to “protect the citizens” of Florida. The second half of that sentence is far more honest: these laws are meant to protect some of the most powerful people in Florida: law enforcement officers.

While SB 184 extends the halo of protection to first responders like firefighters and EMTs, the real purpose of the law is to give cops a reason to harass or arrest people who attempt to film them. Pushing them 25 feet back (a distance left to the discretion of the officer enforcing the new law) makes it harder to get a clear view of what’s happening.

And the lectern sign gives away the game: “Supporting Law Enforcement.” No first responders who aren’t cops have ever complained about the public interfering with their work or wasted valuable first response time telling people to stop recording. That’s something cops do almost exclusively. This isn’t about ensuring first responders are given space to do their jobs. It’s about adding another 20+ feet of distance between cops and accountability.

Here’s DeSantis’ excuse for this latest bit of bootlicking:

DeSantis said the legislation “recognizes we’ve got some strange currents going on in our society right now that really seek to delegitimize law enforcement,” accusing news media outlets of warping narratives about police for attention and “clicks” and citing media coverage of the recent controversial police killing of Dexter Reed in Chicago.

Ron, cops have done plenty themselves to “delegitimize law enforcement.” The only difference in recent years is that it’s a lot harder to control the narrative when everyone on the street is carrying around a camera of their own. That’s what this law aims to deter: citizen recordings. According to the vague wording of the law, filming cops could be considered an act “without legitimate purpose,” which would be enough to justify cops moving people recording police interactions far enough away they can’t fully document the incident.

An amendment to protect citizens’ right to record was rejected. So was Rep. Angela Nixon’s amendment, which simply asked the legislature to fully own the underlying conceit of this ridiculous legislation:

[N]ixon’s proposed amendment to change the name of the bill to “The I Don’t Want the World to See the Police Kill an Unarmed Innocent Man Like George Floyd Again, So I Want To Protect Bad Cops and Violate Free Speech Act” [also failed].

Creating even more separation from accountability is the second bill, which removes the word “independent” from “independent oversight” to allow police to police themselves, something they deliberately do poorly.

The twenty-one civilian oversight boards that currently exist in Florida will be altered starting January 1 of next year, stripping them of anyone local cops don’t approve of. This stripping of any pretense of accountability could not be more transparent, ironically.

All boards will be required to have from three to seven members, with one member being a retired law enforcement officer. (Keep in mind that a lot of officers choose to retire, rather than face internal investigations or other accusations of misconduct. So, there’s a good chance a lot of retired cops are also bad cops.)

Then it gets worse:

All members must be appointed by the sheriff or police chief over the area

Foxes and hen houses, inmates running asylums, or whatever your favorite idiom is. This law ensures no officers will ever face accountability from oversight boards by stocking them with cops and their friends. It’s the opposite of a kangaroo court — a place where exoneration is guaranteed.

None of this is surprising. DeSantis is an aspiring fascist and there’s little more conducive to fascism than law enforcement agencies being given permission to be a law unto themselves. Florida’s governor and far too many of its legislators have declared war on the Constitution. And all the while, they continue to pretend they’re the greatest Americans of all, even as they work in lockstep to create a nightmarish blend of bigotry and totalitarianism.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, filming police, first responders, florida, law enforcement, ron desantis