Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis launched his bid for the Republican presidential nomination Wednesday by promising to bring the suite of culture war policies he’s signed into law in Florida to the whole nation if he’s elected in 2024.
“The woke mind virus is basically a form of cultural Marxism,” DeSantis said in an appearance on .
And, of course, there’s Disney’s recent lawsuit alleging that DeSantis’ efforts to strip the company of governance of the Florida special district where Disney World resides amounted to illegal retaliation violating the company’s First Amendment rights. While such retaliation cases are often hard to prove, Disney’s lawsuit contains copious evidence from public statements and DeSantis’ own book highlighting how his actions were driven by a desire to punish the company for speaking out against the “Don’t Say Gay” law. DeSantis responded to Disney’s lawsuit by calling it “political” and without “merit,” and he asked the court to disqualify the judge assigned to the case, Mark Walker, due to his previous decisions that went against the governor. That lawsuit is pending.
More lawsuits are expected to come after the latest legislative session expanded the Stop WOKE Act and the “Don’t Say Gay” law and banned gender transition health care for minors.
Though the federal courts have increasingly tilted toward conservatives since the Trump administration, protecting the First Amendment’s free speech rights remains an area where the judicial wings of both parties can find agreement. The conservatives on the Supreme Court have been especially protective of the free speech rights of corporations, a key target of DeSantis’ war.
“I am very very confident in our position,” Greubel said.
Still, this broad effort to limit First Amendment rights by imposing restrictions on what may be discussed in colleges, universities and the private sector raises concerns among those who work to protect those rights, especially as DeSantis looks to take this war national in his presidential campaign.
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“It seems really un-American, a lot of the targeting of protester speech rights, the targeting of private employer speech rights, the targeting of speech rights on college campuses,” Agarwal said. “A lot of it is not what Americans recognize as within the bounds of the law.”
