Florida Governor and presidential aspirant Ron DeSantis exhibits the courage to unconstitutionally weaponize government to retaliate against political opposition. He would be a constant menace to freedom of speech in the White House.
Despite graduating from Harvard Law School, Mr. DeSantis remains constitutionally clueless. He cheerleads unconstitutional presidential wars and Orwellian warrantless dragnet surveillance of the entire citizenry targeting the “not-yet-guilty” in flagrant violation of the Fourth Amendment. He endorses harrowing presidential power to play prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner to kill any person on the planet—including you—based on secret unsubstantiated speculation that the victim now or in the future could present a national security threat.
It is crystal clear constitutional law that government may not punish or disadvantage any person or organization in retaliation for free speech. A social security recipient’s benefits may not be diminished or delayed for criticizing the President, Members of Congress, a political party, or a law. The United States Supreme Court elaborated in O’Hare Truck Service, Inc. v. City of Northlake, 518 U.S. 712 (1996): “As we have said: ‘[I]f the government could deny a benefit to a person because of his constitutionally protected speech or associations, his exercise of those freedoms would in effect be penalized and inhibited.’ That would allow the government to `produce a result which [it] could not command directly.' Such interference with constitutional rights is impermissible."
Governor DeSantis, however, has sought to pulverize Disney for respectfully voicing opposition to House Bill 1557, the Parental Rights in Education Act—a signature DeSantis crusade to sharply circumscribe instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in Florida public schools. The Governor was as furious as a child over a missing lollipop upon hearing Disney’s dissent—a microaggression of the worst sort.
He declaimed that Disney “crossed the line” into free speech. He accused Disney of “pledging a frontal assault on a duly enacted law of the State of Florida,” ignoring the time-honored right to seek the repeal of ill-advised statutes or to challenge their constitutionality.
The Governor thus took a wrecking ball to Disney’s Reedy Creek Improvement District—one of more than 1800—to replace Disney’s authority over certain land use and environmental protections with his toadies insinuating that maybe a state prison should herald entry into Disney’s Magic Kingdom. The Florida legislature rubber-stamped the Governor’s temper tantrum against Disney, which has sued to defend its free speech rights to criticize legislation. Representative Randy Fine clinched the constitutionally illicit motivation: “You got me on one thing—this bill does target one company. It targets the Walt Disney Company.'.”
Governor DeSantis needs education in the obvious. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes instructed, “if there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is the principle of free thought—not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate."
Governor DeSantis urgently needs to return to school to learn the United States Constitution. Only then would he be eligible to take the presidential oath of office prescribed in Article 2 “to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”