State Senate: Republican majority
State House: Republican majority
Governor: Ron DeSantis (R)
Attorney General: Ashley Moody (R)
Summary:
Few states have turned red faster in recent years than the Sunshine State under the leadership of nationally recognized Governor Ron DeSantis.
In just the past few months, the state has passed new laws limiting the use of generative AI in political media and creating a new statewide AI Task Force.
The legislature also recently passed, with near-unanimous votes, a new law that prohibits minors under 14 years old from having social media accounts and requires 14- and 15-year-olds to obtain parental consent to obtain an account, and requires age verification for both children and parents. The bill also requires adult websites that contain material “harmful to minors” to conduct age verification on every user. It is likely that Netchoice, a trade association for Internet-based businesses advocating for digital free expression and free enterprise, will bring a challenge to this new law as they did with similar laws in Arkansas and Ohio.
Similarly, SB 7072, which prohibits a social media platform from willfully deplatforming a candidate for public office, passed largely along partisan lines in 2021 and was successfully challenged by Netchoice. In July 2024, the U.S. The Supreme Court ultimately sent the cases back to the lower courts to reconsider whether these laws were facially unconstitutional under the First Amendment.
Attorney General Ashley Moody has been charged with defending this law in court, and also joined a multi-state coalition of AG’s in a letter opposing the Biden Administration’s creation of a Disinformation Governance Board.
Key Policymakers:
- Governor Ron DeSantis, Attorney General Ashley Moody
- Rep. Chase Tramont [R], Rep. Toby Overdorf [R], Rep. Tyler Sirois [R], Rep. Fiona McFarland [R], and Rep. Michele Rayner-Goolsby [D]
- Sen. Blaise Ingoglia [R], Sen. Ana Rodriguez [R] and Sen. Jason Brodeur [R]
Legislative Activity:
HB 3: Restricting minors’ use of social media (Signed into Law). Passed with large majorities in both chambers and signed into law on March 25, 2024, this law would prohibit children under the age of 14 from becoming social media account holders and allows 14- and 15-year-olds to become account holders with parental consent. Rather than targeting specific social media platforms, the law restricts access to any platforms that deploy “addictive” features, such as “infinite scrolling,” algorithms, and push notifications. The law also targets adult websites and aligns Florida with other states like Arkansas and Utah that have attempted to rein in social media use. Introduced by Rep. Chase Tramont [R], Rep. Toby Overdorf [R], Rep. Tyler Sirois [R], Rep. Fiona McFarland [R], and Rep. Michele Rayner-Goolsby [D] in Jan. 2024, passed both chambers with large bipartisan majorities, and signed into law on March 25, 2024. Netchoice will likely challenge this law in court.
HB 991/SB 1780: Limiting professional journalist privilege under defamation law. A Republican bill introduced in the House in 2023 by Representatives Andrade, Beltran, and Black, and Senate in 2024 by Sen. Jason Brodeur [R], this bill provides that journalist’s privilege does not apply to defamation claims when defendant is professional journalist or media entity; requires that certain articles or broadcasts be removed from the Internet within a specified period to limit damages for defamation; provides persons in certain positions relating to newspapers with immunity for defamation if such persons exercise due care to prevent publication or utterance of such a statement; provides a venue for damages for a defamation or privacy tort based on material broadcast over radio or television; and provides a rebuttable presumption that a publisher of a false statement acted with actual malice in certain circumstances. Both bills died in committee in 2023 and 2024, respectively.
HB 7013/ SB 7072: Prohibiting social media platforms from willfully deplatforming candidates for public office (Signed into Law). The Florida law, Senate Bill 7072, was enacted in May 2021 to address allegations that social media companies were moderating content based on its particular political or ideological side following the contentious 2020 election. The law prohibits this type of “viewpoint discrimination” and requires social media sites to provide both notice and a “thorough rationale” to users any time their content is removed, hidden, or otherwise restricted from other users’ view. Introduced by Sen. Blaise Ingoglia [R] and Sen. Ana Rodriguez [R] in March 2021, passed both chambers largely along partisan lines, and signed into law on May 24, 2021. Following a legal challenge from industry consortium Netchoice, a district court blocked the law, finding that it likely violates the First Amendment by controlling the editorial and content moderation decisions of a private platform. The Eleventh Circuit agreed, characterizing the restrictions as overbroad and “an instance of burning the house to roast a pig.” In June 2024, the U.S. The Supreme Court ultimately remanded the cases back to the lower courts for further consideration, focusing on whether these laws were facially unconstitutional under the First Amendment.
HB33: Makes social media companies subject to private right of action and prohibits websites from using hate speech as defense. Introduced by Representatives Sabatini and Borrero, this bill provides that the owner or operator of social media website is subject to private right of action by certain website users under certain conditions. It prohibits websites from using hate speech as a defense, and authorizes the AG to bring action on behalf of website users. The bill died in committee in 2021.
Legal Actions:
Moody v. Netchoice: Social media group challenges deplatforming law. With Moody v. NetChoice and NetChoice v. Paxton, the Supreme Court ruled against Florida and Texas’ attempts to force social media companies to distribute speech against their will. In this case, the platforms argued the First Amendment protects their decisions about what speech to disseminate or promote, similar to how it protects the right of newspapers to decide what appears in their pages. Florida and Texas argued that social media platforms are modern public squares, and that their content moderation activity is comparable to a phone company monitoring calls and shutting off service based on the content of conversations. The states maintain that their laws do not implicate the First Amendment at all because they simply require social media platforms to host speech, which is not itself speech but instead conduct that states can regulate to protect the public. The business model for these platforms, the states say, hinges on having billions of other people post their speech on the platforms, something very different from newspapers creating their own content and publishing it. In June 2024, the U.S. The Supreme Court ultimately remanded the cases back to the lower courts for further consideration, focusing on whether these laws were facially unconstitutional under the First Amendment.
AG Moody Joins Multi-State Coalition Opposing Disinformation Board. On May 5, 2022 Attorney General Ashley Moody called on U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to terminate the creation of a disinformation board that attacks Americans’ First Amendment rights. Along with 18 other attorneys general, Attorney General Moody argues that the proposed Disinformation Governance Board will hurt the constitutional freedom to speak freely, debate and disagree with the government—freedoms that state attorneys general are responsible for defending.The attorneys general argue that this government watchdog agency would abridge a citizen’s right to express their opinions and disagree with the government, furthering self-censorship rather than protecting freedom of speech. The AG’s claim that the board’s creation is also an example of federal overreach and that there is no statutory authority to support its inception.
The letter states that “the Disinformation Governance Board, by its very existence, and almost certainly by design, threatens to ‘enforce silence’ when Americans wish to express views disfavored by the Administration. It is therefore already chilling free speech and impeding the political process in…every…State. This is unconstitutional, illegal and un-American. Unless you turn back now and disband this Orwellian Disinformation Governance Board immediately, the undersigned will have no choice but to consider judicial remedies to protect the rights of their citizens.”
In addition to Attorney General Moody, the attorneys general from the following states signed on to the letter: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and West Virginia.
