Desantis lights taxpayer money on fire, then complains about arson

Catherine Rampell

Imagine an arsonist sets fire to his neighbor’s property. If that blaze then spreads to the arsonist’s own home, can he turn around and sue the neighbor? That’s the strategy Florida Gov. Ron Desantis has adopted, by attempting to punish a beer company his state has a financial interest in because it was the target of a boycott he personally promoted.

Desantis’ presidential polls have flatlined, and donors are dumping him. To compensate, he has been casting about for ways to out-culture-war the culture warriors, particularly front-runner Donald Trump.

Among Desantis’ almost-parodydefyingculturalbattles:

An attempt to reframe slavery, as taught in Florida schools, as a skillbuilding program that somehow benefited enslaved people

Curbs on drag shows (since blocked by a court as likely unconstitutional)

Bans on abortions after six weeks, before many women know they are pregnant.

Not to mention anti-trans bathroom laws, book bans, professor purges, criminalizing the transportation of certain immigrants, forcing migrant kids out of shelters, and so on.

Besides the arbitrary cruelty of such measures, many have undermined a key premise underlying the Republican brand: that GOP policies help the economy.

Florida’s low taxes notwithstanding, Desantis has made his state a less attractive destination for many workers — including women of childbearing age, members of the LGBTQ+ community and immigrants. His administration’s regressive curricular changes also seem unlikely to enhance the state’s homegrown talent.

But perhaps Desantis’ biggest strike against a healthy free-market economy is his use of state power to punish his personal enemies, including private businesses. Republicans have traditionally decried Democrats’ inclination to “pick winners and losers” rather than letting markets decide who succeeds; Desantis has turned the strategy into an art form and, in so doing, distorted the free flow of ideas, goods and investment.

Desantis claims he abhors such behavior. “You can’t have one faction of society weaponizing the power of the state against factions that it doesn’t like,” he said in a recent speech.

But witness his ongoing fight with Disney after the company, under employee pressure, mildly criticized the “don’t say gay” law he signed. More recently, he used his bully pulpit to encourage the public to stop drinking Bud Light, in retaliation for the supposed sin of partnering with a transgender social media personality, Dylan Mulvaney, in a single Instagram post.

“Why would you want to drink Bud Light?” Desantis asked in April. “I mean like honestly, that’s like them rubbing our faces in it.” (Unclear what “it” refers to here; maybe respect and tolerance?)

Such calls to boycott Bud Light — which also came from other allegedly anticancel-culture conservatives — worked. The beer’s sales plummeted, as did the share price of its parent company, Anheuser-busch Inbev.

Now, adding insult to injury, Desantis has launched an investigation into AB Inbev and has hinted at further legal action against it. Why? Desantis says Bud Light’s pursuit of “radical social ideologies” turned its best-selling beer into “a commercial pariah,” which in turn hurt Florida’s pension fund, which had invested in AB Inbev.

Desantis conveniently leaves out the role he played in promoting the boycott that reduced the share price and, by extension, his own state’s pension holdings. He alleges the company “may have breached legal duties owed to its shareholders” and suggests the pension fund (and other shareholders) sue.

Legal experts say any such suit would have virtually no chance of success, given serious jurisdictional, procedural and substantive problems.

On the substantive point: These kinds of shareholder suits are typically brought when members of a corporate board engage in self-dealing or fail in an oversight duty when the corporation has seriously violated the law. In this case, AB Inbev merely made a (completely legal) marketing decision, in an attempt to expand its customer base. The strategy might have backfired — again, because of the anti-trans animus of people such as Desantis — but that doesn’t mean the board somehow breached its fiduciary duty.

“It’s a business decision that worked out badly; what else is new?” says Jeffrey Gordon, a Columbia University law professor.

There’s actually a specific safe harbor in U.S. law that shields corporate boards from liability for exercising “business judgment” even in cases where, with 20/20 hindsight, the judgment was mistaken. Attorneys representing shareholders in a suit like the one Desantis proposes could find themselves getting sanctioned for bringing a frivolous case, Gordon adds.

Desantis, who graduated from Harvard Law School, presumably knows this. He also presumably doesn’t care.

The governor is desperate to recast his culture wars as economically savvy, despite evidence to the contrary. So he throws around fancy-sounding legal jargon and insists he’s working to “prudently manage the funds” of Florida’s public servants, residents and investors.

You know what might be a more convincing way to do this? Not lighting taxpayer and investor money on fire.

CHARLIE NEIBERGALL / ASSOCIATED PRESS Florida Gov. Ron Desantis speaks to reporters Thursday following a meet-and-greet at the Hotel Charitone in Chariton, Iowa.