Last month, a federal judge easily declared Florida's social media law (complete with its Disney-inspired theme park exemption) as unconstitutional. It wasn't a hard call. Florida had tossed out a bunch of wacky arguments and the judge smacked down each and every one of them. He even pointed out that if you didn't use strict scrutiny (as you must) to analyze whether the law violated the 1st Amendment, it would still be unconstitutional.
But, of course, as we discussed with Florida legislator Anna Eskamani last week, this was never about anything more than trying to kick up yet another culture war. So it should come as little surprise that Florida has now officially moved to appeal the district court ruling. This will shock no one, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be disappointed. This will be yet more of a waste of Florida taxpayer money on a frivolous legal battle in a state that has some pretty significant and real problems at the moment.
Hopefully, the 11th Circuit makes quick work of this. The district court judge, Robert Hinkle, of course, expected all of this, and much of his ruling seems drafted to convince judges on the 11th Circuit (he more or less said as much in the hearing before his ruling). But, these days, you still do need to worry that some confused judge will suddenly get infatuated with a dumb idea, and make a total mess of things. Even though to basically every expert this law is obviously unconstitutional, no one should breathe easy until after the courts have thoroughly stomped on its dead corpse and made that abundantly clear.
