David French thinks the case law supports Disney in its battle with Ron DeSantis. He’s a lawyer of some repute, so I respect his opinion on the subject. In addition, he thinks that protecting people and corporations from government retaliation for speech it doesn’t appreciate is an essential part of the First Amendment, and liberal democracy as a whole. In his view, therefore, Disney is fighting for all of us. Is he right?
Yes. The situation in Florida is actually more dire than French makes it out to be. DeSantis argues that he is only trying to take Disney’s unwarranted privileges away, but the record shows that his objective is really to force critics of the right to shut up, regardless of whether they have any special privileges. From “Don’t Say Gay” to “Stop Woke” to changing defamation law to forcing politics bloggers to register to preventing professors from testifying to denying liberal teachers tenure to criminalizing peaceful behavior at violent demonstrations to book bans, DeSantis and his Florida GOP acolytes are determined to stifle dissent in their state. Disney is the tip of the iceberg, but you have to start somewhere.