Florida lawmakers keep getting smacked around by federal judges who say the politicians in Tallahassee treat toilet paper with more respect than the United States Constitution.
Judges from both sides of the aisle have shot down the governor’s and Legislature’s attempts to manipulate election laws, take control of privately funded social media operations and imprison citizens who donate to political causes the politicians dislike. Yes, imprison.
In some of these cases, GOP lawmakers knew what they were doing was illegal. Their own staffers warned them. So did fellow Republicans. But they didn’t care. Not about the Constitution they took oaths to uphold. Nor about how many of your tax dollars they spent defending this garbage.
They’ve tried to hide that last part. (I’m still waiting for copies of legal bills I requested last July.) Fortunately, the Orlando Sentinel isn’t scared to fight for public records. Neither is the First Amendment Foundation, a legal advocacy group for open government and Florida media.
And records the First Amendment Foundation obtained show Florida has paid lawyers $425 an hour and as much as $675 an hour — more than some Floridians make in a week.
Some of those big bills were paid in the case where Gov. Ron DeSantis and GOP legislators tried to make it illegal for you to donate more than $3,000 to any grassroots efforts to get an amendment proposal on the Florida ballot. If you gave $3,001 to a campaign to raise the minimum wage or shrink class sizes, for instance, they wanted the ability to imprison you.
Now, these politicians knew they couldn’t do such a thing. The U.S. Supreme Court had already ruled it unconstitutional. But they tried anyway.
In striking down the law, conservative federal Judge Allen Winsor — a Donald Trump appointee — described it as “wholly foreign to the First Amendment.”
Again, lawmakers knew that before they passed the law and started paying lawyers with the Shutts & Bowen firm to defend it. They just didn’t care. Because it was your money they were wasting.
In fact, they’re trying again this year with a similar contribution cap that once again applies only to amendment efforts. Judicial rulings be damned.
Invoices provided to the First Amendment Foundation showed Shutts billed the state as much as $745 an hour for its services. But Shutts attorney George Meros said Tuesday night that invoice was a mistake — that he and his partner were paid only $425 an hour.
That’s less than the $675 an hour Florida paid other lawyers to defend the Legislature’s attempts to regulate social media, only to suffer a similarly expected judicial beatdown.
The legislators’ own staffers had warned them. One GOP senator described it as so obviously un-American that it seemed seemed better suited for Cuba.
But Republicans legislators passed it anyway — after carving out a special theme-park exemption for their donor buddies at Disney — and then used your tax dollars to defend that junk law.
The judge in that case noted the Republicans’ favoritism for Disney but said the constitutional problem was that government was trying to control speech on privately funded platforms.
None of this was about serious policy. It was about pandering to a red-meat base that doesn’t care about true conservatism any more than it does constitutionalism.
It was taxpayer-funded demagoguery — and a windfall for Florida lawyers.
Keep in mind: All these legal bills were in addition to the armada of full-time, taxpayer-funded staff attorneys the state already has on the payroll.
The state claims its in-house lawyers lack the “necessary legal experience” to defend this legislation. But really, how much experience do you need to get your tail whupped in court over and over?
Some partisan defenders may say: Well, any governor is going to face some legal challenges. And that’s true. In fact, I sometimes roll my eyes at DeSantis critics who immediately claim that anything they dislike is unconstitutional.
But let’s be clear: These specific cases were different. They all involved laws that legal scholars — and even the Legislature’s own staffers — warned them about.
Think about it. Do you need a law degree to know that politicians can’t throw you in freakin’ jail for donating $3,001 to a campaign for the environment while the politicians take checks of up to $5 million apiece?
Do you really need a federal judge to tell you that government can’t force a private business to allow a child predator or Klan member to use that company’s privately funded media platform to spread filth?
Or that a governor can’t appoint a lawyer with nine years of legal experience to the Supreme Court when the state constitution says he or she must have 10? (That was one of DeSantis’ earlier, clearly unconstitutional actions — one rebuffed by his own hand-picked members of the Florida Supreme Court.)
You don’t need a J.D. to know that stuff. You just need half a brain and an ounce of integrity … which is apparently more than most Florida politicians have to offer.
The elected officials who support this clearly unconstitutional crud should be voted out of office. But as long as they’re still there, they should be the ones paying all these ridiculous legal bills. Not you.
Taxpayers work way too hard to see their money flushed right down the toilet, especially at a flush rate of $675 — or even a measly $425 — an hour.
