From Big Tech to mask mandates, courts kill DeSantis priorities

As the 2021 legislative session ended, Gov. Ron DeSantis was riding high.

Although lawmakers had testy relations with DeSantis’ predecessor, Rick Scott, they worked hand-in-glove — under the thumb might be more accurate — with DeSantis. The governor got whatever he wanted, including a crackdown on Big Tech, a ban on vaccine passports, and a law to slap rioters with felonies.

A few months later, the Big Tech law is struck down, cruise lines are widely ignoring the vaccine passport ban and an executive order banning mask mandates in schools is struck down by a state judge and flouted by school districts following the CDC guidance.

Another priority of the Legislature itself — kneecapping state constitutional amendments by restricting campaign contributions — has been overturned by the courts, and DeSantis’ so-called anti-riot law may be next.

It would be hard to believe this incredible reversal of Republican fortune were it not so easy to see it coming. All of these laws and orders are wrongheaded, ignorant, illegal — or all three.

Big Tech backfire

It took just two months after the April 30 end of the session for DeSantis’ muchvaunted crackdown on Big Tech to get blocked by the courts. In the twisted logic we’ve seen in recent years from Tallahassee, DeSantis and his henchmen in the Legislature claimed to be defending the free speech rights of conservatives — by curbing free speech rights of social media platforms.

We’re unhappy to be forced to defend the free speech rights of the disinformation clearinghouse known as Facebook and the troll-filled hellscape of Twitter, but it should be clear to a first-year law student — much less DeSantis, a Harvard law graduate — that the bill was a flagrant violation of free speech rights.

A representative of a group that sued DeSantis over the law called it “an insult to American values” in an opinion piece published in the Sun Sentinel. We agree.

“The state has asserted it is on the side of the First Amendment; the plaintiffs are not,” wrote federal Judge Robert Hinkle in his slam-dunk decision blocking the law. “It is perhaps a nice sound bite. But the assertion is wholly at odds with accepted constitutional principles.”

The Legislature also passed a patently obvious violation of free speech rights when it capped contributions to constitutional amendment campaigns at just $3,000. (Of course, lawmakers’ own political committees could continue to rake in unlimited amounts.)

In this case, the judge’s findings were so embarrassing that the state did not appeal.

Where to stick your mandates

First, DeSantis’ executive order banned vaccine passports. The Legislature codified the ban in law. Then a DeSantis executive order banned mask mandates in schools, and no doubt the Legislature will pass that into law as soon as it can.

But that hasn’t stopped cruise lines — which were fighting a petri-dish image before the pandemic — from insisting on vaccine proof. And it certainly won’t prevent sovereign nations from demanding such proof when cruises arrive in their ports of call. (Have you tried to get to the Bahamas recently? It’s just 60 miles away, but it might as well be 60,000.)

As for mask mandates, school boards across the state have rightly defied the governor and put the health of children before some benighted Floridians’ insistence that their rights trump public health measures. Unfortunately, DeSantis kowtows to those who would wave an American flag while their nation burns. They are the same people who cheered when Donald Trump would molest a flag onstage at his rallies, and they are an important constituency for DeSantis’ 2024 presidential ambitions.

Leon County Circuit Court Judge John Cooper is happily not one of those people. He tossed DeSantis’ mask mandate last week.

“The evidence clearly demonstrates that the recommendation of the CDC for universal masking of students, teachers and staff represents the overwhelming consensus,” Cooper said in announcing his decision. “The evidence submitted by defense represents a minority, even a small minority.”

Cooper called DeSantis’ ban on mask mandates an overreach of authority. Perhaps the appellate court above Cooper, whose 15 members include three DeSantis appointees and eight appointed by his predecessor Scott, will see otherwise. They have demonstrated in the past a willingness to be as obsequious as DeSantis’ toadies in the Legislature.

What’s next?

Arguments got underway last week in a lawsuit against another DeSantis priority, his so-called anti-riot bill. In its legal definition of a “riot,” the bill opens the door to any person involved in a peaceful protest being charged with a felony if part of a protest turns violent — yes, even those protesters who do not participate in the violence.

The state argued in court that the law protects the right to protest. Horse manure. The plain language of the law says otherwise.

U.S. District Judge Mark Walker grilled the state’s attorneys Monday in a tone that suggests this law will join the other Republican attacks on the First Amendment that came out of this year’s legislative session. It’s sad, pathetic even, that Floridians’ cherished First Amendment rights must so often be defended in court against the very people we have chosen to represent us.

We only hope it results in people rethinking why they elect Tallahassee lawmakers who then oppress the voters who put them there.

The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.