Cancel Culture Is Running Amok in Florida

The Republican-controlled state government is attacking institutions and people who don't comport with their cultural agenda

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Like a modern-day Knight Templar, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is leading a crusade against anyone who doesn’t subscribe to his right-wing ideology. Empowered by his landslide reelection win and the Republicans gaining a supermajority in both houses of the state legislature last November, he has intensified his culture war assault on whatever and whomever he finds objectionable. His attacks on what he derisively calls “woke culture” began in 2022 with laws such as the “Don’t Say Gay” and “S.T.O.P. Woke” acts. After the CEO of Disney, Florida’s largest private employer, spoke out against these laws, DeSantis moved to strip the company of its special district privileges And to demonstrate his tough-on-crime bona fides, he suspended the elected State Attorney for Hillsborough County for signing onto a letter circulated by District Attorneys nationwide vowing not to enforce recently-enacted restrictions on abortion.*

DeSantis is fond of the type of cheap political stunts designed to burnish his image as a no-backing-down fighter. Protect our borders? Not a problem for the Governor, who chartered planes at taxpayer expense to fly Venezuelan asylum seekers from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard. Well, actually there was a problem: earlier in the year, DeSantis signed off on a budget that set aside $12 million to create a program for transporting unauthorized migrants out of Florida. The legislature stepped in earlier this year to cover the Governor’s derriere by appropriating an additional $10 million to transport migrants from other states. DeSantis evidently wants not only to be Governor of Florida but of all of Magalandia.

Then there is the matter of DeStantis ignoring the fact that cases of such fraud are historically rare by creating a special election security force to root out voter fraud. The election police made headlines last summer when they arrested 20 former felons for illegally voting. The fly in this ointment is that in 2018, Florida voters approved a referendum that allowed convicted felons- except for those convicted of murder or felony sex offenses- to automatically have their right to vote restored. Not so fast, the Republican majority in the state legislature said, stepping in to pass legislation requiring the former felons to fulfill every part of their sentence, including paying any fees or fines, in order to regain their voting rights. Most of the twenty arrested had been registered to vote and issued voting cards by local election officials and were understandably under the impression they were obeying the law. Oops…Apparently distracted by battling the forces of woke, the state had failed to create a system that allows local officials to easily verify voter eligibility. For DeSantis, it appears the headlines count more than the efficient administration of justice.

Last year was a busy one for the Canceling Crusader. In 2022, DeSantis went all out to protect the state’s schoolchildren from the horrors of left-wing indoctrination by injecting ideology into public education via his legislative agenda. This year he’s raised his sights, taking aim at Florida’s public universities and colleges. He is pushing an agenda that removes “DEI” (Diversity, Equality, Inclusion”) programs from the state’s higher education system. Subjects such as gender studies and ethnic studies are being jettisoned. Faculty hiring and tenure will be under boards appointed by the Governor with the stated purpose of replacing faculty perceived to have a liberal bias with people of a conservative bent. His opening salvo in January was directed at the most progressive of Florida’s public university system, the New College of Florida, where he packed the school’s board with loyalists and replaced the president with a political crony.

Of course, public education, and especially public university systems, operate under the aegis of government. Elections do have consequences and though academic freedom advocates think government oversight of institutions of higher learning should be at arm’s length, political interference in academia is not a complete surprise.

Canceling the First Amendment

But now the Governor, building up steam for his yet-unannounced candidacy for the 2024 Republican Presidential nomination, had decided that he knows best about our constitutional rights. He is supporting HB991, the bill in the legislature that would effectively lower the threshold for bringing defamation suits against media companies and expand the definition of defamation itself. The goal is to make it easier for public officials to sue news organizations that are critical of them by removing the high bar of “actual malice” that the Supreme Court put in place in 1964.**

While this might set the hair of First Amendment advocates on fire, Republican State Senator Jason Brodeur introduced a bill to pour gasoline on the flames by requiring bloggers who write about Gov. Ron DeSantis, his Cabinet, or state legislators to register with the state”. The bill would also require the bloggers to disclose who’s paying them.

Those who won our independence believed . . . that public discussion is a political duty, and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government… that it is hazardous to discourage thought, hope and imagination; that fear breeds repression; that repression breeds hate; that hate menaces stable government; that the path of safety lies in the opportunity to discuss freely supposed grievances and proposed remedies, and that the fitting remedy for evil counsels is good ones. Believing in the power of reason as applied through public discussion, they eschewed silence coerced by law -- the argument of force in its worst form. Recognizing the occasional tyrannies of governing majorities, they amended the Constitution so that free speech and assembly should be guaranteed." -Justice Louis Brandeis, concurring opinion in Whitney v. California,

Florida’s leaders have taken a stand on the side of silence coerced by law.

Coda

It was reported last week that the DeSantis administration was attempting to revoke the liquor license of a Miami hotel that had hosted a Christmas-themed drag queen show.

*Andrew Warren, the suspended State Attorney, sued in Federal Court and won a mixed decision earlier this year. The judge found that in suspending him for signing the letter, DeSantis violated Warren’s First Amendment rights. However, the judge also ruled that, under Florida law, he lacked the authority to reinstate him.

** New York Times v. Sullican (1964): The US Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment protected errors and inaccuracies in speech and media when it involved public officials. The burden to prove statements both false and made with “actual malice”-with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not- lies with the plaintiff.

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