During a bill-signing ceremony in Jacksonville, DeSantis said that he and the Legislature took pains to craft a bill that could withstand judicial scrutiny.
Renner, who attended the ceremony, agreed.
“You will not find a line in this bill that addresses good speech or bad speech, because that would violate the First Amendment. We’ve not addressed that at all. What we have addressed is the addictive features that are at the heart of why children stay on these platforms for hours and hours on end,” Renner, a Republican representing Flager and part of St. Johns counties in northeast Florida, said.
And Attorney General Ashley Moody promised: “You better believe I’m gonna fight like hell to uphold this in court.”
However, the courts haven’t always agreed with DeSantis about bills touching on the First Amendment.
As recently as March 4, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit struck down a 2022 law forbidding employers from requiring workers to attend diversity and inclusion training. The “Individual Freedom Act,” also known as the “Stop Woke Act,” bans instruction on a range of diversity concerns, including that “an individual, by virtue of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”
“By limiting its restrictions to a list of ideas designated as offensive, the Act targets speech based on its content. And by barring only speech that endorses any of those ideas, it penalizes certain viewpoints — the greatest First Amendment sin,” the court said.
In late February, meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court seemed doubtful about a 2021 Florida law, and similar legislation from Texas, attempting to punish social media platforms that quash content they deem disinformation; conservatives believe such efforts unfairly target them.
On Monday, DeSantis defended the diversity and inclusion as merely ensuring that “you don’t have to sit there and self-flagellate yourself because you happen to be white, let’s say,” he said.
“The company can say whatever it wants, the company can offer whatever training it wants, but you have the right to opt out,” the governor continued.
“And we lost in court with Republican judges saying that somehow that violated the company’s First Amendment right. But they can say whatever they want; we’re just saying you have a right to opt out of that, that you shouldn’t have to be a guinea pig and have them shove this down your throat,” he said.
“I just think it’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what’s going on in society to basically say that companies have the First Amendment right to coerce employees into woke indoctrination. That’s not healthy for society. So, we’re going to work on ways to be able protect our employees here in the state of Florida.”
As for the teenage-social media law, proponents argue that platforms use properties including algorithms to keep users scrolling away and leading them to material that encourages destructive behavior, including eating disorders and self-harm, or sets them up for sexual exploitation. Platforms that refuse to adoptthose techniques remain free to sign up teenagers under the new law, which takes effect on Jan. 1.
“You can have a kid in the house, safe seemingly, and then you have predators that can get right in there into your own home. You can be doing everything right but they know how to manipulate these different platforms,” DeSantis said.
“If I said to you that a company was going to take children, use addiction that causes them harm for profit, what does that sound like? Sounds like trafficking to me,” Renner said.
“And this digital trafficking is exactly what groups like NetChoice, that is the [industry] umbrella that will sue the day after this bill is signed, or the second after this is signed. But you know what? We’re going to beat ’em. We’re going to beat ’em, we’re never ever going to stop.”
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