Florida Legislator Thinks First Amendment Should Be Trimmed Back A Bit To Deal With Social Media Threats

Free Speech

from the not-loopholes-but-protections dept

A reaction to the (non-physical) “explosion of social media in our society” has prompted an Florida legislator to make a questionable law even worse. Florida already has a law on the books making it a second-degree felony to threaten to kill or harm someone via electronic communications.

That’s apparently not good enough for state Rep. Stan McClain (whose “explosion” statement is quoted above). He has introduced an amendment to the law that would eliminate the language requiring targeted communications.

McClain’s bill would outlaw “written threats to kill or do bodily injury to another person that are publicly posted online, even if not specifically sent to or received by the person who is the subject of the threat…”

You can see immediately where the problem lies: this bill has the potential to criminalize protected speech, not to mention cause harm to people who express themselves terribly and in an unfocused manner. State Rep. Julio Gonzalez argued the bill would criminalize stupidity — a tempting prospect to be sure, but all but guaranteed to result in First Amendment violations.

McClain wants to fix what he views as a loophole in the state’s existing online threats law.

[A] recent state appellate decision highlighted the problem of prosecuting such cases when threats are posted on social media, as opposed to being sent by email, and are not necessarily aimed at one person.

“A juvenile’s conviction … was overturned, although the juvenile had posted multiple threats of school violence on Twitter, because the threats were not directly sent to or received by any of the threatened students or school officials,” a staff analysis explained.

This isn’t a bug. It’s a feature. Online speech should be difficult to prosecute, just like offline speech is. There’s a fine line to be tread when prosecuting apparent threats. Rewording the state law this way will only lead to state-ordained punishment of protected speech.

McClain is still trying to fine tune his bill, but it has already been passed out of committee and is the on the road to becoming viable legislation. The language treats any threat that can be viewed by anyone else as a criminal act, even if viewers aren’t targeted. McClain says the targeted criminal activity is the posting of threatening messages. He claims prosecutors won’t stack charges based on how many times the untargeted threat was viewed. That’s nice of him to say before the fact, but the reality is Florida residents won’t know how the law will be enforced until someone starts enforcing it.

Filed Under: first amendment, florida, free speech, stan mcclain