A federal judge in Orlando has delivered yet another legal smackdown to Gov. Ron DeSantis and GOP legislators, this time blocking the state’s new anti-drag-queen law.
It’s hard to keep track of how many times these guys have been caught violating constitutional boundaries. Judges appointed by Republican presidents, Democratic presidents — even by DeSantis himself — have all ruled that legislators and the governor have tried to run roughshod over the state and federal constitutions they vowed to uphold. The politicians have tried to violate your rights and then spent your tax dollars trying to defend their unconstitutional actions.
Last week’s ruling in a case brought by the drag-themed Hamburger Mary’s restaurant in Orlando was yet another example. It also reinforced two lessons for all Floridians:
1) Read these controversial laws for yourself.
2) Don’t believe the lies.
In this case, Judge Gregory Presnell called baloney on the state’s argument that the law was never meant to target drag queens — largely because the politicians said they passed it to try to target drag queens. The judge cited their own words to expose their lies.
Presnell also noted that the law was far too nebulous to be meaningfully interpreted and that Florida already has laws on the books protecting minors from sexually explicit performances.
Advocates said it was merely meant to prevent children from being exposed to nudity and sexual content. But anyone who actually read the bill could see it went far beyond that.
Yes, the bill tried to ban businesses and nonprofits from staging performances for all ages that contained nudity. But it also banned open-to-all performances that were “lewd” or “shameful” — words that are open to wildly different interpretations. Sound laws aren’t intentionally unclear.
The judge cited “vague language — dangerously susceptible to standardless, overbroad enforcement which could sweep up substantial protected speech …”
Some of us who’d actually read the bill before it was passed told you this long ago. We’d watched, for instance, bill sponsor Randy Fine embarrass himself on the House floor when he couldn’t even explain his own bill. He’d been asked to define “shameful” — so that venue owners might know what might get them arrested if his bill passed — and Fine responded:
“Um … um … [eight seconds of silence] … I think that it again, that is things that are … I dunno … I mean, again, you can look these things up in the dictionary.”
Many of these guys are just bad at their jobs.
Many are also weirdly obsessed with drag queens — much more than they are concerned with protecting children in general. After all, this bill does nothing to stop parents from taking children to movies that feature hard-core sex scenes or graphic violence — only to “live performances” via a bill that cited “prosthetic” breasts.
Judge Presnell wrote that their concerns about protecting minors rang “hollow, however, when accompanied by the knowledge that Florida state law, presently … permits any minor to attend an R-rated film at a movie theater if accompanied by a parent or guardian. Such R-Rated films routinely convey content at least as objectionable …”
And he noted that, when Republican lawmakers specifically targeted “prosthetic” breasts, that could also target “cancer survivors” who showed cleavage … while still allowing parents to take 5-year-olds to movies that feature graphic sex. Those are some twisted family values.
Presnell also noted the law seemed at odds with another one of the state’s new culture-war laws — the “Parents’ Bill of Rights” that supposedly declared parents should make decisions for their own children.
You remember that one, right? The so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law that advocates also lied about, hoping you wouldn’t actually read it.
They claimed the bill only attempted to ban discussions about gender identity in “kindergarten through grade 3,” hoping you wouldn’t read the next part of the bill that said it also banned discussions any time they were deemed “not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate.”
One of the bill’s sponsors admitted in a hearing that the bill applied to high schoolers as well. But advocates counted on you being too lazy to read the bill for yourself.
I am amazed and depressed by the number of people who allow themselves to be misled.
Some backers of the anti-drag queen bill will probably accuse Presnell, a veteran Bill Clinton-appointed jurist who also presided over much of the Joel Greenberg mess, of being a liberal judicial activist. Again, they will count on you not doing your own research — to know, for instance, that a Donald Trump-appointed federal judge recently struck down a similar anti-drag-queen law in Tennessee as well.
Judges from both parties have repeatedly found laws approved by Florida’s GOP lawmakers to be unconstitutional.
In one case, a Trump-appointed judge said the politicians’ efforts to knee-cap citizen-led petition drives was “wholly foreign to the First Amendment.”
In another, DeSantis’ own conservative appointees to the Florida Supreme Court ruled he violated the state constitution by trying to appoint a justice who didn’t meet the minimum qualifications to serve.
Over and over again, these politicians violated the constitution, paid lawyers as much as $675 an hour to defend their bad decisions and then made it difficult for media organizations to tally up the costs.
And they do it all because they can.
Because they count on you not reading the bills when they lie about what the bills say. And because they’re usually re-elected after doing so.
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