Judge shoots down Ron DeSantis’ fight against free speech.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, is using every tool at his disposal to maintain his state’s six-week abortion ban. The law, deeply unpopular with voters, routinely prevents women from receiving emergency care and forces thousands to leave the state to seek medical treatment. In November, they can repeal it by passing Amendment 4, a ballot initiative that would restore reproductive rights in Florida. The initiative requires 60 percent support to pass, and DeSantis is spending huge amounts of taxpayer money to defeat it.

This month, the governor stepped up his fight against Amendment 4 by demanding the removal of pro-choice ads from the airwaves and threatening to prosecute and jail the media for their distribution. In this week’s Slate Plus bonus episode of Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discussed a major legal blow to DeSantis’ unconstitutional censorship regime, as well as his replacement plan to counter Democratic rejection of his agenda. A preview of their conversation below has been edited for length and clarity.

Dahlia Lithwick: Last time we checked in On Amendment 4, Ron DeSantis’ Department of Health and Human Services threatened criminal sanctions against television stations that aired factually true pro-choice advertising, claiming it was false and dangerous. Tell us what happened in the last week.

Mark Joseph Stern: Proponents of Amendment 4 filed a lawsuit in federal court arguing that these threats violated the First Amendment. They noted that some networks have stopped airing the ad, which is not surprising: The DeSantis administration threatened employees with 60 days in prison if they left the ad on the air. This was a blatantly tyrannical suppression of language.

Fortunately, the lawsuit was assigned to Judge Mark Walker, an Obama appointee who had little sympathy for DeSantis’ suppression of free speech and voting rights. He very quickly held a hearing and then issued an injunction ordering the administration to stop threatening television stations with penalties for airing the ad. It was based in large part on a recent, unanimous Supreme Court decision NRA vs. Vullowhich states that the government cannot force third parties to censor speech it disapproves of. And of course that’s exactly what happened here.

This is so interesting because we’re facing an election where everyone is calling everyone a liar and it’s all fake news. Judge Walker’s opinion goes to the heart of the question of who gets to decide what is true and what is false, particularly in the area of ​​political speech. He wrote: “The government cannot excuse its indirect censorship of political speech simply by declaring the disapproved speech ‘false.'”

He continued to quote Judge Robert H. Jackson: “The real purpose of the First Amendment is to prevent the public power from assuming a guardianship of public opinion by the regulation of the press, speech, and religion.” In this field each man must be his own guardian of the truth “For the ancestors did not trust any government to separate the true from the false for us.” And then Walker ended beautifully: “To keep it simple for the state of Florida: It’s the First Amendment, stupid.”

I think what Walker means is that these efforts by DeSantis to be the sole arbiter of what is true are deeply creepy. The Governor takes it upon himself to tell us what can be played on the airwaves because he will decide what is true.

And this decision is just the latest in a long line of attempts by DeSantis to stifle speech. He has tried to suppress free speech in support of ballot initiatives. He has attempted to censor universities, public schools and even private workplaces. He was shot down again and again by the courts, including 9/11^Th US Court of Appeals, its conservatives have repeatedly said that DeSantis is crossing the line and pushing back against free speech, which he doesn’t like. Still, it seems as if no more court losses will undermine the governor’s quest to control what people say and ultimately stop people from retaliating Think Things he doesn’t approve of. He manipulates the instruments of democracy and the channels of expression in order to relentlessly pursue this goal.

That’s not all the news on Amendment 4 this week, is it?

Correct. DeSantis’ allies have also filed suit Condition A court is trying to invalidate Amendment 4 even though millions of Floridians are already voting on it, long after the Republican secretary of state approved the signatures to put it on the ballot. The plaintiffs falsely claim that there was mass fraud in the collection of signatures, so the courts would now have to reject the entire amendment or overturn it if it passes. They base their claim on an absurd report from DeSantis’ “election crime” police, which released a report on mass signature fraud without any meaningful evidence.

In my opinion, the immediate goal is to destabilize the campaign for this amendment and confuse voters about whether it is even legal. But the long-term goal is to kill it in court if it gets through. If DeSantis doesn’t suppress enough speech and enough votes to stop Amendment 4 at the ballot box, he has a Plan B to ensure Floridians never get their reproductive rights back.

I think this really shows how effective it can be in muddying the waters and discouraging people from participating in direct democracy. But I ask you as a former Floridian: Don’t Floridians value their ability to participate in direct democracy?

I just want to remind you how the Florida Constitution begins. Article I, Section I: “All political power shall vest in the people.” In Florida, political power lies not with the legislature, the governor, or the courts, but with the citizenry. And Floridians take great pride in their ability to amend their own constitution—which is guaranteed In the constitution. It states that the power to propose an amendment “on initiative” is “reserved to the people.”

DeSantis has fundamentally rejected the basic premise of Florida government that the people hold power. Remember: One of the first things he did after taking office was to rule out a 2018 constitutional amendment that sought to restore the right to vote to ex-felons. He didn’t like that people were putting it into effect, so he repealed it. That has been the guide for everything he has done since.

The governor announces this He decides when and how the law is changed. He behaves like an authoritarian, or perhaps a king, concentrating all political power in his own governorship and forbidding the people from overruling him if they don’t like what he’s done. He manipulates freedom of expression. He manipulates the electoral machinery himself. He sends agents to intimidate people who support a constitutional amendment he doesn’t like. He uses every tool available to the authoritarian regime to prevent the exercise of freedom of expression and legislative power by those who ultimately have it, namely the people. And he does it to maintain political power, which he uses as a weapon against women to prevent them from exercising control over their bodies. It should be a national scandal. It’s sick.

In this conversation about authoritarians and the use of government resources to suppress democracy, is there any entity that can stand up to Ron DeSantis in Florida? And what does that look like?

If we look for a silver lining, I find that there are defectors. One of them is John Wilson, the attorney general for the Florida Department of Health, who sent these threatening letters to television stations in the first place. The Miami Herald has reported that shortly after sending the letters, he apparently resigned in protest, saying, “A man is nothing without his conscience. “I cannot accompany you on the path that lies before the agency.” It So there are people who draw a line. Not enough of it yet, but I hope there are more who refuse to go along with DeSantis’s quest to permanently undermine democracy Florida.