Will I Be Able to Critique Ron DeSantis Any More? Will ANY Blogger be able to? Will Any Florida Citizen be able to?

The answer may well be "NO" if the Florida legislature passes the defamation legislation proposed by its authoritarian Governor

The New York Times editorial board has come out in opposition to HB 991, an as yet untitled bill moving through the House of Representatives in Florida, for good reason. If it is passed as written, it would enable “a public figure” to file a defamation suit “…if the allegation against the figure wasn’t related to the reason for the person’s public status.” As the editorial board’s editorial writes:

(This means) if a person is publicly known for being elected president or governor, and a news organization publishes an investigation about that person’s private or business life unrelated to elected office, that report would not get the special liability protection provided by the Sullivan decision.

The editorial elaborates on the Sullivan decision as follows:

(The New York Times Company v. Sullivan is a) bulwark of First Amendment law requires public figures to prove a news organization engaged in what the court called “actual malice” to win a defamation case. By preventing lawsuits based on unintentional mistakes, the decision freed news organizations to pursue vigorous reporting about public officials without fear of paying damages. The decision has even been applied by lower courts to bloggers and other speakers who make allegations about public figures.

I did not realize that what I write on my blog is protected in the same way as a newspaper writer but was never THAT concerned about it since my readership is hardly broad enough to warrant the attention of anyone I might have unintentionally misrepresented. But as I wrote the sub-heading for this post describing Ron DeSantis as “authoritarian” it might be an example of me being vulnerable to a lawsuit should this bill pass. Is my fear unwarranted? Given the ease with which Google could “out” me as a blogger who questions Mr. DeSantis’ commitment to democracy and given the potential penalty… maybe I’ll need to get some kind of insurance. Especially if I were to insinuate that Mr. DeSantis is a “bigot”. As the Times editorial board writes:

The bill goes much further than this attempt to hobble the press. It makes it clear that the new defamation rules would also apply to any single “utterance on the internet,” which could mean a tweet or a Facebook post written by anyone, or “any one presentation to an audience,” which could include statements made at school board hearings and other public meetings.

In a direct attack on a key aspect of free expression, it says that whenever someone is accused of discriminating against others on the basis of race, gender or sexual orientation, that accusation is automatically considered enough to sue for defamation. Any person accused of bigotry based on sexual orientation or gender identity could file a defamation lawsuit and be virtually guaranteed of winning by saying the discrimination was based on personal religious or scientific beliefs. The penalty for calling someone a bigot would be a minimum of $35,000.

Being a school superintendent for nearly 30 years, I will be interested to see if the law retains its current definition of a “public figure” which would appear to include school personnel who are “appointed by elected officials”. Assuming Florida’s laws are like those in the seven states I worked in, should this law pass a public educator appointed by a school board would be able to sue a student, parent or community member if that individual accuses the educator of discrimination based on race, gender, or sexual orientation or makes a defamatory statement in public or online.

As noted above, HB 991 does not have a title yet. Knowing Governor DeSantis, he will likely come up with a catchy and misleading title like “Defending Democracy from Defamation”. A more accurate description given its current language would be “The Full Employment for Anti-Defamation Attorney’s Act… which could be shorted to the acronym: FEAD Attorneys.