Thank goodness! That law was absolutely ridiculous and didn't even make sense to anyone who attempted to look at it objectively. I'm glad this has been shot down.
Thank goodness! That law was absolutely ridiculous and didn't even make sense to anyone who attempted to look at it objectively. I'm glad this has been shot down.
Important to note, I think, is this is not striking down the law, just granting a preliminary injunction - preventing the law from going into effect as scheduled on July 1st, while the actual case...
Important to note, I think, is this is not striking down the law, just granting a preliminary injunction - preventing the law from going into effect as scheduled on July 1st, while the actual case against the law is ongoing.
Despite the fiery language in the ruling, this is ultimately just the judge saying that the challenge is likely to succeed on the merits, and so delaying it makes sense because of the harm that would be caused by allowing it to go into effect before the challenge has been figured out.
There'll have to be another ruling, possibly not until next year because courts move very slowly, with a final decision on the merits.
And even then, that will just be a ruling in district court. Florida, depending on how much money they want to waste paying lawyers to defend this absurd law, could try to appeal to a federal circuit court, and then if they don't like that ruling, appeal to the Supreme Court.
If you want to be cynical (and I do), Florida politicians like DeSantis are fine with this dragging out because they want "fighting against Big Tech censoring conservatives" as a campaign talking point for 2022 and 2024. Few if any of them had any real expectation that this law would survive court challenges.
Since I'm always a fan of digging up the primary source documents for legal cases like these (which many journalists annoyingly don't bother to link to): Here's the judge's actual ruling (31 page...
Since I'm always a fan of digging up the primary source documents for legal cases like these (which many journalists annoyingly don't bother to link to):
And if you want to search for similar documents, the case name is NetChoice vs. Moody, in the Northern District of Florida federal court (another pet peeve of mine is journalists who leave that out of articles).
Thank goodness! That law was absolutely ridiculous and didn't even make sense to anyone who attempted to look at it objectively. I'm glad this has been shot down.
Important to note, I think, is this is not striking down the law, just granting a preliminary injunction - preventing the law from going into effect as scheduled on July 1st, while the actual case against the law is ongoing.
Despite the fiery language in the ruling, this is ultimately just the judge saying that the challenge is likely to succeed on the merits, and so delaying it makes sense because of the harm that would be caused by allowing it to go into effect before the challenge has been figured out.
There'll have to be another ruling, possibly not until next year because courts move very slowly, with a final decision on the merits.
And even then, that will just be a ruling in district court. Florida, depending on how much money they want to waste paying lawyers to defend this absurd law, could try to appeal to a federal circuit court, and then if they don't like that ruling, appeal to the Supreme Court.
If you want to be cynical (and I do), Florida politicians like DeSantis are fine with this dragging out because they want "fighting against Big Tech censoring conservatives" as a campaign talking point for 2022 and 2024. Few if any of them had any real expectation that this law would survive court challenges.
Since I'm always a fan of digging up the primary source documents for legal cases like these (which many journalists annoyingly don't bother to link to):
Here's the judge's actual ruling (31 page PDF)
And if you want to search for similar documents, the case name is NetChoice vs. Moody, in the Northern District of Florida federal court (another pet peeve of mine is journalists who leave that out of articles).
By searching based on the case name I was also able to dig up NetChoice's original filing challenging the law (70-page PDF), and amicus briefs filed by the Internet Association (48 page PDF) and Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the ACLU (8 pages, not a PDF for once).