DeSantis Vetoes Terrible Social Media Bill… Only To Support One That’s Just As Bad

Free Speech

from the no,-just-kidding dept

I had thought that maybe, just maybe, now that DeSantis had dropped out of the Presidential race, maybe (just maybe?) he’d stop pushing blatantly unconstitutional laws. That’s not to say that DeSantis has any good ideas. But it felt like over the last few years, he really leaned into the nonsense culture wars in an attempt to boost his own profile for a hilariously inept Presidential run. He seemed to think that going to war with a “woke Disney” would somehow appeal to the brainwashed fools who now make up the base of his party. It didn’t work.

During the past few years, though, DeSantis passed a long list of culture war bills and watched as Florida taxpayer money was thrown away and one after another was tossed out as unconstitutional.

And there were a few signs that maybe a slightly more reasonable DeSantis was emerging. A few weeks back he talked about how he supported amending legislation that was being used to ban books in school to be more explicit in not banning books (even though he knows full well that’s the intent of the law).

And then, there’s HB 1. This is yet another new anti-social media law, which we wrote about earlier this year. The bill was from Rep. Tyler Sirois, whose website claims he is “dedicated to the principals of limited government, individual responsibility, and constitutional liberty.” (Also, fwiw, he means principles, not principals, but I think we’ve established that Tyler Sirois is not the sharpest knife in the legislative drawer).

And his first bill of this session violated all three of those things. It’s a big government bill that removes individual liberty in a clearly unconstitutional way. So, of course, the Florida legislature passed it.

A few weeks back, DeSantis made some noise suggesting he would veto it, knowing that it was unconstitutional:

“I think that I’m not going to be supporting if I don’t think it’s going to be something that’s going to pass legal muster in the courts,” Ron DeSantis said in Cape Coral.

[….]

“What I’ve said previously, these things have huge legal hurdles. They’ve been held up in courts. I don’t want to go down the road of doing something that is not going to be going to pass muster legally,” DeSantis said.

[….]

“I don’t want to have anything where government is forcing the disclosure of folks. But when you’re talking about verifying ages, if you do that in a way that’s ham-handed, you’re going to lead to that,” DeSantis said.

That sounds almost reasonable? It sounds like someone who has had multiple laws he supported thrown out as unconstitutional and who is no longer running for President, so he doesn’t need to go “full culture war.”

But, come on, this is Ron DeSantis we’re talking about here. Did anyone think he’d actually give up on unconstitutional, censorial nonsense?

On Friday, he did, in fact, veto the bill. But, he immediately said he’d be supporting another bill that he thought was better.

I have vetoed HB 1 because the Legislature is about to produce a different, superior bill. Protecting children from harms associated with social media is important, as is supporting parents’ rights and maintaining the ability of adults to engage in anonymous speech. I anticipate the new bill will recognize these priorities and will be signed into law soon.

So what is that “different, superior bill”? Turns out it’s HB 3. It’s not that different. It’s definitely not superior. It’s just as bad and (importantly) just as unconstitutional.

It bans social media for anyone under the age of 16 (already found to be unconstitutional elsewhere). It requires parental controls/parental consent for accounts under 16 (already found to be unconstitutional elsewhere).

Therefore, I’m going to suggest that DeSantis doesn’t really much care about whether or not he supports a clearly unconstitutional bill, or that he will be wasting more taxpayer money defending it. He just didn’t like this one unconstitutional bill and appears to prefer a different one. That’s not progress. It’s moving sideways.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, florida, parental consent, ron desantis, social media, teenagers, tyler sirois