Ron DeSantis says the quiet part out loud, undermines anti-protest laws

Protesters opposing the Cuban government blocked several Miami-area roadways Tuesday, including a major highway. Police responded by shutting down the highway, creating buffers a great distance from the protesters in either direction and routing cars off the road, allowing protesters to do their thing. They "negotiated" an end to the protests and reopened the roads around 11 p.m. last night, almost twelve hours after the protests began.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis famously signed an "anti-riot" bill. A protester can be cited for "willfully obstructing the free, convenient, and normal use of a public street, highway or road." Penalties are enhanced if someone blocks a roadway during a protest that comes to destroy property. And the bill provides immunity for anyone who runs over a protester in the street. But  police attempted to negotiate and keep the protesters safe, but never issued a dispersal order. No one was cited yesterday and police made sure no drivers got anywhere near the protesters by blocking the roadway.

DeSantis was asked about this; the Miami Herald describes his answer:

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article252766758.html#storylink=cpy

“What is going on in Cuba in particular, those are not simply normal, run-of-the-mill protests like we see here in the United States. They don’t have freedoms respected there, whereas in the United States, you have a panoply of freedoms that are respected,” DeSantis said. “They are seeking an end to the regime itself.”

He added: “They are trying to end the regime. So that is fundamentally different from what we saw last summer where people were burning down buildings — and this was fortunately not happening in Florida to a large extent — burning down buildings, looting, breaking windows and targeting law enforcement and all those things.”

This is incoherent. The extraordinary measures that people in Cuba are taking to end the regime and their lack of a "panoply of freedoms" has nothing to do with protesters in Miami, who have that panoply and are able to engage in "normal, run-of-the-mill protests." They chose this method of protesting, apparently to draw maximum attention to the cause (which, logic suggests, is what every group wants to do). Many BLM protests got out of hand when police confronted protesters, issued dispersal orders (often very quickly and simply because the gathering was large), and attempted to clear the protesters--that never happened yesterday. Finally, the BLM protests "target[ed] law enforcement" only in the sense that their protests criticized and sought to change the behavior of law enforcement, just as Tuesday's protests criticized and sought to change the Cuban regime. So the difference, according to DeSantis, is the subject of the protest--targeting law enforcement is bad and grounds for mass arrests for blocking highways, targeting the Cuban regime good and grounds for law-enforcement to allow a major roadway to be shut down for half a day.

The anti-riot law, which is the subject of several ongoing First Amendment lawsuits, is an example of a law written in content-neutral terms but has a content-based motivation and is likely to be enforced in a content-based manner. Yesterday's events illustrated that point. We saw how police responded to similar actions during the 2020 protests, before the new law was enacted. And we saw how police responded yesterday, with the new law in place. Combined with DeSantis' statements distinguishing anti-Cuba protests from anti-police protests, the lawyers challenging these laws have a new piece of evidence for arguing these laws are content- (if not viewpoint-) discriminatory.

Just to be clear: I am not criticizing the protesters; breaking laws to protest injustice is a storied free-speech tradition. And police should give protesters a certain amount of leeway for spillover. But the response of police and the governor illustrate First Amendment problems with Florida's vaunted laws enacted less than three months ago.

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article252766758.html#storylink=cpy