Outrageous attacks on free expression in Florida

Two new initiatives in Florida, one of them originating with governor DeSantis, constitute such fundamental attacks on free expression that they should be ringing loud alarm bells all over the country.

The first of these is SB 1316, a proposal by Republican state senator Jason Brodeur.  If enacted, this law would require all bloggers who write about top Florida government officials, and are paid for their work, to register with the state or face fines.  It also creates an onerous system of mandatory reporting of blog posts and payments received.  While it would not penalize specific content, the intent is plainly to discourage bloggers from writing about state political figures at all, especially negatively, by warning them that the government knows who they are, and by imposing burdensome requirements.

Aside from being a clear attack on free speech, this would egregiously violate the First Amendment, since it places restrictions on political writing (those who have not registered are forbidden to write about top officials) and imposes penalties (the fines).  The plain language of the First Amendment -- "Congress shall make no law..... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press" -- forbids any such restriction.  To echo a point often made about the Second Amendment, the First Amendment does not grant or define any right of free speech; it prohibits the government from imposing any limits or constraints whatsoever upon that freedom.  Which is exactly what SB 1316 is intended to do.

SB 1316 applies only to bloggers who are paid for their writing, which most of us are not.  However, the First Amendment recognizes no such distinction.  If the state can get away with imposing such rules on paid bloggers, it can go after unpaid ones as well.

Any halfway-honest judge would strike down this law (if it passes at all) at first challenge, but that's no absolute guarantee.  Most judges do apply the Constitution honestly, whatever their own personal leanings (recall that all of Trump's sixty or so lawsuits challenging the 2020 election were thrown out, even though some of them came up before judges appointed by Trump himself), but there are some who put their own ideology first.  We can't even trust the Supreme Court these days, now that it has become just as ideologically polarized as the rest of the political system -- the Dobbs ruling, for example, abandoned stare decisis on a fundamental right which had stood for half a century.

The second attack comes from governor DeSantis himself, and is already under way, not merely proposed.  Earlier this week DeSantis appointed a board to oversee the "Central Florida Tourism Oversight District", the autonomous area covering Disney World.  The board is "stacked with DeSantis cronies", including a Christian minister and a leader of the Federalist Society.  While the board officially just handles infrastructure and maintenance in the district, DeSantis openly intends that it should use its power as leverage to influence the content of Disney's movies and other entertainment.

This follows an ongoing campaign by DeSantis to penalize Disney in various ways for its opposition to certain state laws he supports.  That is, he has already established a pattern of using state power to punish private entities for speaking out against his policies.  But trying to use state power to control the content of entertainment media takes it to an even more alarming level.

It does not matter that Disney has been generally in the wrong in opposing laws which, for example, bar schools from exposing children to discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation at grade levels where they are too young for such concepts.  It does not matter that lately Disney has been churning out an endless stream of godawful preachy "woke" trash including vandalized remakes of its own classic movies.  Disney, like anyone else, has an absolute right to speak out on political controversies without penalty, and to express itself artistically as it chooses without government interference.

(Anyway, if you want better movies, ideological government meddling is the very last thing you should support.  Consider the clunky, dreary, forced quality of official Soviet or Nazi art, or that of any authoritarian state.  There are reasons why virtually all popular film, TV, humor, etc originates in free democracies like the US, Japan, and the UK, from creators wholly unconstrained by government.  Ideology and politics are deadly to artistic expression.)

If DeSantis's board actually starts trying to interfere in Disney's film productions, there will almost certainly be a legal battle -- Disney can certainly afford lawyers.  The outcome will bear close watching.

It can no longer be said that DeSantis would be less bad than Trump.  Whatever else he might do if he becomes president, he has shown that he would mount a far more focused and competent attack on free expression than Trump was ever capable of.

Thanks to Progressive Eruptions blog for sounding the alarm on these issues, specifically via this post and this post.