Trump-appointed judge slams Florida's attack on the First Amendment. That's a relief - Editorial

[In It to Win It]

Miami Herald via Yahoo News

In their frenzy to protect Donald Trump’s “free speech” rights to spread falsehoods on social media, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Republicans appear to have misunderstood — or flat-out ignored — the First Amendment.

That beloved 45-word amendment to the U.S. Constitution gets its fair share of mentions in political speeches. But, in Florida, it sometimes applies only to those who toe the line of the party in power. Disney learned that the hard way when it got blacklisted for opposing a parental-rights bill critics call “Don’t say gay.”

One group that really gets under the governor’s skin are Silicon Valley’s “Big Tech” firms, the so-called “woke” folks who banned Trump from Twitter, Facebook and YouTube after the Jan. 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol last year. Despite warnings that he would run afoul of the U.S. Constitution, DeSantis pushed a bill through the Legislature that, among other things, fined social-media companies for de-platforming political candidates in the run-up to an election. Disney, which at the time hadn’t yet fallen from grace with Republicans, earned a special exemption for its mobile platforms.
Harsh words

To no one’s surprise, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled that the law restricts tech companies’ First Amendment rights. In a decision ironically written by a Trump appointee, appellate Judge Kevin Newsom, the court dressed down Senate Bill 7072: “The government can’t tell a private person or entity what to say or how to say it.”

If conservatives want to force social-media sites to allow users who violate their policies to remain on their platform, then they can’t cry foul if liberal states compel these companies to ban people spreading misinformation. The latter is actually what threatens our democracy and augments polarization, not the perceived “censorship” of conservative voices by “woke” tech corporations.