So what’s new in DuhSantistan?

I believe I mentioned recently on this board about how New York Times v. Sullivan (the case that DeSantis wants to kill because it protects the media) arose out of segregationists using state defamation law to try to bankrupt Northern papers that reported critically on Jim Crow and favorably on the Civil Rights Movement.

Bigoted Florida Republicans want to revive that strategy. They just put forward a bill that would allow bigots who hate transgender people to sue for defamation anybody who accuses them of discrimination, AND this bill would prevent the person they're suing from being able to mount a defense if the bigot's statements were based on his "religious beliefs" or "scientific beliefs." Under the law, the bigot is entitled to AT LEAST $35,000 in damages.
HB 991 (2023) - Defamation, False Light, and Unauthorized Publication of Name or Likenesses | Florida House of Representatives

It suffices to say that this law very obviously violates the First Amendment. But the point of it is to make it difficult to stop the enforcement of it (its enforcement mechanism is modeled after the Texas anti-abortion law) and to broadly chill political speech that the ignorant, authoritarian assbags in our state government dislike.

 

DeSantis unveils 2024 school board target list to block 'woke' ideology from Florida classrooms

EXCLUSIVE: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday rolled out a list of more than a dozen school board members he plans to target in 2024 to protect Florida students and parents from "woke" ideologies seeping into classrooms across the Sunshine State, Fox News Digital has learned.

DeSantis met with Florida House Speaker Paul Renner, Moms for Liberty co-founders Tina Descovich and Tiffany Justice and key leaders in Florida's school board reform movement in a Tuesday morning meeting.

During that strategy session, DeSantis unveiled his initial 2024 school board target list, which features 14 school board members across the state who "do not protect parental rights and have failed to protect students from woke ideologies."

DeSantis unveils 2024 school board target list to block 'woke' ideology from Florida classrooms

 

As a Hillsborough County resident, I have one thing to tell moRon DeSantis on the school board elections: Bring it on b!tch!

 

I'm with you. Screw him and the Moms Against Liberty.

 

Tina Descovich is still butthurt that she lost her reelection to the school board over mask wearing, in a very conservative county. She is a nutball.

 

WaPo opinion piece. Nice tweet by NYC mayor Eric Adams.

Regardless, any comparison between Florida and New York does not serve DeSantis well. In 2020, the homicide rate in Florida was 5.9 murders per 100,000 people, and the violent crime rate was 384 per 100,000, according to the Daily Beast, citing the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report. New York, meanwhile, had 4.2 homicides per 100,000 people and a violent crime rate of 364 per 100,000 people. New York City itself had a homicide rate of 5.6 per 100,000, slightly below the national average of 6.5 and half Miami’s rate of 12.8.

Predictably, Eric Adams, New York’s law-and-order mayor, blasted DeSantis. “Welcome to NYC, @GovRonDeSantis, a place where we don’t ban books, discriminate against our LGBTQ+ neighbors, use asylum seekers as props, or let the government stand between a woman and health care,” he tweeted.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/02/22/desantis-flops-foreign-policy/

 

https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2023/999/BillText/Filed/PDF

Just disgusting stuff here...

Some highlights:

The board shall periodically review the mission of each constituent university and provide updates or revisions to such mission as needed; examine existing academic programs at each constituent university for alignment with the university's mission; and provide direction to each constituent university on removing from its programs any major or minor in Critical Race Theory, Gender Studies, or Intersectionality, or any derivative major or minor of these belief systems, which is any major or minor that engenders beliefs in the concepts defined in s. 1000.05(4)(a).

(c) General education core courses may not suppress or distort significant historical events or include a curriculum that teaches identity politics, such as Critical Race Theory, or defines American history as contrary to the creation of a new nation based on universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence.

(1) The Legislature finds it necessary that every undergraduate student of a public postsecondary educational institution in the state graduates as an informed citizen through participation in rigorous general education courses that promote the values necessary to preserve the constitutional republic through traditional, historically accurate, and high quality coursework. Courses with a curriculum based on unproven, theoretical, or exploratory content are best suited to fulfill elective or specific program prerequisite credit requirements, rather than general education credit requirements.

(3) General education courses must: (d) Whenever applicable, promote the philosophical underpinnings of Western civilization and include studies of this nation's historical documents, including the United States Constitution, the Bill of Rights and subsequent amendments thereto, and the Federalist Papers.

 

Sure as hell sounds like indoctrination to me!

 

Interesting, that is definitely not the direction I thought the numbers would be pointing.

 

There are so, so many bad and unconstitutional laws being introduced right now. I can only hope most of them die well before passage. But considering DeSantis is pushing for quite a few of them, odds are those will pass, and taxpayers will end up paying for more of DeSantis's unconstitutional political stunts.

 

state AG now requesting permission to cut off all funding to any provider that provides abortion services

Florida AG asks judge to reverse rule allowing public money to fund expenses unrelated to abortion (msn.com)

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (NSF) - Pointing to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last year to overturn Roe v. Wade, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody is asking a federal judge to scrap a 2016 ruling that prevented the state from cutting off public money to abortion providers for health services unrelated to abortion.

U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle in 2016 sided with Planned Parenthood affiliates and issued an injunction against a law that would have prevented state and local-government money from going to abortion providers for services such as testing for sexually transmitted diseases and screening for breast and cervical cancer. Florida has long prevented public money from being used to fund abortions.

In a seven-page motion, Moody’s office asked Hinkle to vacate the injunction because the U.S. Supreme Court last year overturned the Roe v. Wade decision that established a constitutional right to abortion.

According to Moody, ”You’ll see this, not only in Florida, but around the nation in many courts as they readdress these injunctions that may be based on law that is no longer in effect.” The motion says that in light of last year’s ruling in a case known as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the legal basis for the injunction no longer exists.

 

Doesn't the state constitution still hold abortion as a constitutional right?

 

For now. But the federal case is based on the U.S. Constitution.

It's worth noting that the motion is unopposed.

 

why do you think it is unopposed?

 

Not exactly. The state constitution was amended to include a right to privacy. That amendment has been interpreted to protect a woman's access to an abortion, but abortion is not specifically mentioned. The Florida Supreme Court has become much more conservative since those prior rulings.

 

I looked at the motion. The plaintiffs agreed not to oppose it if the defendants agreed for the judge to delay the vacatur of the injunction until June 1. It was the best for way for them to protect their clients in a no-win situation.

 

Well, the answer is yes, it does. But the DeSantis-appointed Florida Supreme Court can redefine our rights.

 

This is a semantics thing. The constitution itself does not protect the right to abortion. That protection comes from the Florida Supreme Court's interpretation of the privacy amendment. Women would be be far more protected with an amendment that specifically mentions and protects abortion rights.

 

That's a bit like saying the Constitution itself doesn't protect our right to express ourselves through art or associate with others in political parties. Those rights are, of course, protected by the First Amendment, but they involve interpretation of the amendment. So maybe it is semantics, but I disagree that a constitution itself doesn't protect what is implicitly part of the right it protects.

And I'll just say that Floridians would have been less protected if the right to privacy was instead a right to abortion. By creating a much broader right that was widely understood at the time to also protect reproductive rights, we created more robust protections for all Floridians, including women. But you're right, if the Florida Supreme Court interprets that right disingenuously to strip away those protections, it does hurt women (among others).