Martha Asencio-Rhine/Tampa Bay Times via AP
Protesters in St. Petersburg, Florida, demonstrate against police brutality following the police killing of George Floyd, May 30, 2020.
Last summer, after George Floyd died under Derek Chauvin’s knee, protesters in Pensacola, Florida, held a week’s worth of rallies and sit-ins. On June 6, those protests reached a dramatic peak as protesters linked arms on the Pensacola Bay Bridge on the westernmost edge of the Florida Panhandle. As they blocked traffic, protesters demanded that the city’s mayor come to the bridge to respond to their policing reform demands. Mayor Grover Robinson soon arrived in a bright-yellow rain jacket.
The initial shouts gave way to serious negotiations, until Robinson agreed to appoint Haley Morrissette, a leader of that day’s protest and an organizer for Dream Defenders, a local civil rights group, to a newly formed citizens’ police advisory committee. The 12-person committee was first proposed after the death of Tymar Crawford, a 28-year-old Black man who was killed by a Pensacola police officer in 2019. Morrissette broke down in tears; the protesters cheered, and soon moved off the road to let cars through.
But this week, the Florida legislature is on the cusp of passing legislation that would make blocking traffic—as the Dream Defenders did on that wet June day—illegal. That legislation, HB1, is an anti-protest bill that expands the list of felony charges and minimum sentences that could be slapped on future protesters. And it’s now quickly making its way through the state Senate. Last Friday, the Appropriations Committee passed the bill along near-party lines, and this Wednesday, the legislation is scheduled to be heard on the Senate floor— curtailing the already limited opportunity for public testimony.
To be sure, the proposed laws could cut both ways, adversely affecting right-leaning activists as well as liberal protesters. But the legislation, given its timing, was clearly aimed at the Black Lives Matter protesters who rallied against racism and police brutality last year. Florida’s anti-protest bill is only the latest in what Vera Eidelman, a staff attorney with the ACLU, calls a “tsunami” of like-minded legislation across the country.
Activists in Florida say that if passed, the legislation could be disastrous for social movements. Jamil Davis, the North Florida regional organizer for Black Voters Matter, an organization devoted to amplifying Black voices in politics, saw firsthand the success protesters had during the Black Lives Matter movement in Pensacola. According to Davis, dozens of protests and rallies persuaded the city to establish the advisory committee devoted to police reform. Without widespread protest—and thousands of residents making their voices heard in the streets—Davis said activists’ demands wouldn’t have been met.
These proposals can be traced back to those Black Lives Matter protests. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis introduced the bill in September, with a draft that included more severe consequences for protesters than what ultimately ended up in HB1. For instance, DeSantis initially wanted to strip convicted protesters of access to public funds for post-incarceration employment assistance, clearly targeting some of the most vulnerable people in the state. But by sending the bill to lawmakers on the evening of January 6, DeSantis has since created a false narrative that it was drafted in response to the Capitol Riot, as opposed to the string of protests that followed George Floyd’s murder.
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The legislation is purposely vague, which gives law enforcement even more insidious powers—almost any type of protest is grounds for arrest. Under the bill, peaceful protesters could face felony charges and up to five years in prison if a rally becomes violent through no fault of their own. ACLU lawyers say the sweeping protection of memorials and monuments is also chilling. Pulling down a Confederate flag, for instance, could lead to felony charges and 15 years in prison. And the bill’s protection of violent counterprotesters from civil lawsuits means that even if protesters are injured but not charged, they would have no recourse in the courts.
Although HB1 is called an “anti-riot” bill by Republican lawmakers, that’s a misnomer. The ACLU of Florida says there’s already an anti-riot law, designed specifically to punish those who incite violence at protests. Instead, Democratic lawmakers and legal experts agree this is really an “anti–peaceful protest” bill, aimed at intimidating Black Floridians specifically. Black protesters are already five times more likely to be arrested at rallies across the country. “It’s the governor’s number one priority,” says Kara Gross, legislative director for the ACLU of Florida. “It’s called HB1 for a reason.”
The bill would also impose new costs on Florida state government. According to an independent report contracted by the Florida Campaign for Criminal Justice Reform, the legislation would lead to a significant uptick in arrests and prison sentences. Economist Rick Harper, the study’s author, estimates that mandatory minimum sentencing laws and additional felony charges could increase annual incarceration costs by as much as $17.5 million. And with the state’s corrections system already in fiscal crisis, Florida doesn’t have money to spare for this kind of increase without commensurate cuts elsewhere in the state budget.
The legislation is purposely vague, which gives law enforce-ment even more insidious powers—almost any type of protest is grounds for arrest.
After a historic year for protest movements and voter turnout, Republican legislatures are now responding with the full force of the law. Tabatha Abu El-Haj, a professor at Drexel University’s Kline School of Law and a leading expert on constitutional law, said the Florida bill is part of the larger GOP response to this newly assertive progressive civil rights movement. “This legislation is seeking to undercut the power of people who try to get the attention of their governments to act differently,” she says. “It sends a message: It will be harder to protest—and that’s a chilling message.”
According to the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL), there are 71 pending anti-protest bills in the United States, including ones in Arizona, Indiana, Missouri, and Oklahoma. Limiting access to public aid didn’t make it into the final bill. But Elly Page, a senior legal adviser with ICNL, says that other state legislatures used DeSantis’s “kitchen sink” draft from September as a blueprint. “It was the first time that we saw most of the anti-protest provisions that we’ve seen since,” she says. “It really did foretell what was to come.”
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In many cases, anti-protest bills in different states have the exact same language as the Florida plan, as if lawmakers were copying and pasting many of the same passages into their own proposals. Page says that the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a conservative organization that facilitates interstate coordination, is usually involved. But in this case, ALEC hasn’t played a role. Rather, DeSantis’s draft gained national attention and momentum on its own. As one of the presumed front-runners for the 2024 presidential race, DeSantis continues to make a name for himself by his fidelity to the GOP’s Trumpian national agenda.
“It seems to me that DeSantis and the Florida state legislature are on the side of white supremacist values,” Davis, the North Florida organizer, says, “as opposed to upholding the safety and rights of all of their constituents.”
