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One year ago this month, Twitter permanently suspended a 340,000-follower account for repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation rules. The owner of that account, the former New York Times reporter and vaccine skeptic Alex Berenson, responded with a lawsuit demanding reinstatement. Suffice to say that few observers thought he had any chance of coming out on top. One lawyer went through the complaint page by page on Twitter and concluded that Berenson had hired a band of incompetent knock-off muppet lawyers to present a doomed case.

Then, somehow, the muppet lawyers won. Earlier this summer, Twitter put Berensons account back online, noting that the parties have come to a mutually acceptable resolution. Berenson wasted little time in calling out mainstream media for failing to cover the pathbreaking settlement that led to his return. I mean, imagine being @dkthomp right about now, he wrote triumphantly, in reference to my colleague Derek Thompson, who last year dubbed Berenson the pandemics wrongest man. Now hes bent on being acknowledged as the victim of the pandemics wrongest ban.

Whatever the merits of Berensons case, and of the specific tweet that led to his suspension, the outcome is significant. For years, people who have been booted off Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other platforms have tried to sue to get back on, and for years, most of their cases were dismissed. Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, analyzed 62 such decisions for an August 2021 paper and found that the internet companies had won essentially all of them. When he read about Berensons lawsuit, he told me, his first impression was that it was doomed to fail just like the dozens of others that have also failed.

Berenson's victory was not based on his argument that his ban was a violation of the First Amendment; the judge rejected this claim. Instead, his success seems to have hinged on promises made to him by a high-level Twitter employee. The points youre raising should not be an issue at all, the companys thenvice president of global communications assured Berenson at one point, according to the complaint. The lawsuit says the same executive later told Berenson that his name had never come up in the discussions about Twitters COVID-19 misinformation policies. Goldman believes that the courts decision to allow a claim based on that correspondence prompted Twitter to settle. Internet-service executives have always been instructed by lawyers not to talk with people about their individual accounts and not to make any promises about what might happen, Goldman said, for reasons that should now be obvious.

This was not the end of the drama, though. Last week, Berenson published a Substack post that included screenshots of a conversation on Twitters internal Slack messaging system from April 2021, obtained during the course of the lawsuit. The images show employees discussing a recent White House meeting at which members of the Biden administration were said to have posed a really tough question about why Alex Berenson hasnt been kicked off from the platform, as one Slack message put it. Another alleges that Andy Slavitt, who was at the time a senior adviser to Joe Biden on the administrations COVID-19 response, specifically mentioned a data viz that had showed [Berenson] was the epicenter of disinfo. Berenson has since declared that he will sue the Biden administration for infringing upon his free speech by compelling Twitter to take action against his account.

Once again, legal experts say that his case is unlikely to succeed. Berenson faces a very high bar in proving that a private company behaved as a state actor, Evelyn Douek, an Atlantic contributor and assistant professor at Stanford Law School, told me. According to both her and Goldman, the Slack messages that Berenson published dont amount to proof that the government pressured Twitter to remove Berensons account. But Douek is generally perturbed by the evidence of informal pressure by government officials to constrain speech. It does strike me as unusual, she said. Its certainly unusual to get records of it.

Andy Slavitt told me that he did participate in a meeting with Twitter but doesnt recall bringing up Berenson by name. Twitter sets its own policies, and I wanted to understand them, whether theyre good or bad, he said. I asked him about an MIT data visualization, widely circulated around that time, that described an anti-maskers network with Berenson as an anchor. Had he brought up that data-viz in the meeting? He said it was possible: I dont doubt it, because we tried to use examples. But he denied having asked Twitter to get rid of Berenson, with whom he claimed to have only passing familiarity. I think his name was in a magazine article, he said. I dont remember anything else about him.

I reached out to Berenson to request an interview, but he refused to answer questions about his legal fight with Twitter, and the settlement that came out of it. If you want to have a real conversation that ends in a piece that discusses Dereks piece as well as my case, we can do so, he responded, once again referring to my colleague, but I expect that will be impossible for you.

Content moderation is messy by its nature. Health- or science-content moderation can be even more chaotic. Like other social platforms, Twitter tried to implement new policies at the start of the pandemic that could be applied to conversations about a rapidly shifting set of best practices for public health. Twitters COVID-19 misleading information policy specifically considers in violation any claim of fact that is demonstrably false or misleading and likely to impact public safety or cause serious harm. But those definitions have proved tricky.

Consider the final tweet from Berenson before he was kicked off Twitter last year, which made the following statements about COVID-19 vaccination: It doesnt stop infection. Or transmission. Dont think of it as a vaccine. Think of it - at best - as a therapeutic with a limited window of efficacy and terrible side effect profile that must be dosed IN ADVANCE OF ILLNESS. And we want to mandate it? Insanity. The first two statements in the tweet are factually accurate. The third wouldnt seem to qualify as a claim of fact. The fourth, with its reference to a terrible side effect profile, is at least tendentious and arguably misleading, but the overall point of the tweet is to express disdain for vaccine mandates. How, exactly, did this tweet factor into Berensons removal from the site? A spokesperson for the company would provide me only with the same statement it had given out in July: Upon further review, the statement said, Twitter acknowledges Mr. Berensons Tweets should not have led to his suspension at that time.

Read: Joe Rogans show may be dumb. But is it actually deadly?

Stephanie Alice Baker, a sociologist at City, University of London, has taken issue with the concept of harm as its used in health-misinformation policies on Twitter and Facebook. Scientific consensus and official recommendations have changed over the course of the pandemic, she argues, citing the changing early advice on face masks, as well as the retraction of prominent papers in The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine about the safety of various medications used by COVID-19 patients. Part of the issue with predicating content moderation policies on the concept of harm at the start of the pandemic is that scientific understanding of harm was uncertain and evolving, Baker told me recently via email. Harm is not a neutral concept, she added. What is considered harmful is highly contingent on partisan issues and politics.

In the meantime, the mere existence of these policies serves as fodder for a culture war over platforms efforts to mitigate harmful speechand Berensons victory has been good for morale among those who believe that theyve been censored. One of the lawyers who represented him, James R. Lawrence III, has been posting about his other clients, including the Rhode Island doctor Andrew Bostom and the former combat medic Daniel Kotzin, both of whom were kicked off Twitter for violating COVID-misinformation policies. Science is not about the truth revealed by technocrats; its about discussion, Adam Candeub, a Michigan lawyer who advised President Donald Trump on his efforts to counter alleged anti-Republican bias on social media, told me. Candeub has filed lawsuits on behalf of banned Twitter users but has never found success like Berenson and Lawrences. It worked for them; thank God it did, he said.

The next round of lawsuits may go nowhere, but they still can play a role in a growing ecosystem of aggrieved influencers, for whom claims of being censored by the platforms are themselves a form of clout. Goldman told me that this issue is only getting hotter. New efforts to regulate social media at the state level could enable far more legal action, with higher odds of success. If laws like those that have been passed in Florida and Texas were to stand up in court, everything will change, Goldman said. We will see a massive tsunami of litigation that dwarfs what weve seen today.

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Alex Berenson Is Back on Twitter - The Atlantic

Genevieve Hoffman| Guest columnist

Genevieve Hoffman is a civil defense attorney in Upper Arlington. She is a moderate voter who has previously volunteered with Republican campaigns in Ohio but has been called to pro-choice activism in the wake of Dobbs.

Ohio Republican political strategist Mark Weaver was recently quoted as claiming the issue of abortion will take a backseat and be a distant memory in November and wont motivate many new people to vote Democrat, claiming, It has agitated people that were already blue votes.

More: Steve Chabot vs. Greg Landsman: Why strange things are happening in this U.S. House race

Im here to tell Mark Weaver he is wrong.I spent years of my life committed to the ruse of socially liberal, fiscally conservative.

I have been a red voter and Im agitated as hell.

Roe was settled law for 50 years until the activist justices violated the First Amendment when they favored their personal religious beliefs over the rights of a nation.

People may wonder why I am so angry when banning or restricting abortion has a little chance of directly affecting me as someone who is permanently done childbearing. This view wholly ignores both the full impact of Dobbs and the understanding that I unintentionally facilitated the fall of Roe by voting for pro-life candidates based on their positions on other issues.

Let me be perfectly clear: The agenda behind Dobbs is not about protecting life its about keeping women docile and controlled, and the means to this end is through forced birth.

More: Columbus on Roe v. Wade's end: Dispatch readers share their thoughts on Dobbs decision

More: How to submit guest opinion columns to the Columbus Dispatch

J.D. Vance, who wants to represent Ohio in the U.S. Senate, claimed Daylight Savings Time affected female fertility. His concern, he stated, arises from the fact that hes "a nationalist who worries about America's low fertility. (The tweet was since deleted, but captured in screenshots.)

Then, after the fall of Roe, he claimed women have been had if they find it liberating to have a career. A prospective U.S. senator is blatantly trying to restore the barefoot and pregnant status quo.

Because Roe was settled law, I felt comfortable voting for pro-life candidates who shared my fiscally conservative views, and I am certain Im not alone.Now, the only way forward is to revoke all support from any candidate that does not support a womans right to full bodily integrity.It also involves making sure the men in our lives do the same.

Mark Weaver will never be denied life-saving medical care because of a state law premised on his gender.Abortion can be a distant memory for him.He gets to prioritize gas prices and inflation.

Each time that a man who claims to be pro-choice votes for a candidate who disagrees because they share other views the man agrees with, that man is telling the women in his life those things matter more than the right for those women to have complete autonomy over their bodies.

More: 200-year-old 'compromises' empowers those who seek to dismantle abortion rights| Opinion

Women are angry blue and red women and we will vote in a way that protects our right to control our own bodies.Will the men?Is my right to be a whole person enough to change their vote?

When Election Day comes, will a man who claims to support a womans right to bodily autonomy vote in a way that protects his wife? His sister? His daughter?Will he do so at the expense of his wallet?When money is at stake, will he care more about that than his own childs right to bodily autonomy? To life-saving medical care?

This is the linchpin.Without the support of people who are only indirectly benefited by the right to an abortion, we fail.Dont let Mark Weaver be right.

Get agitated.

Genevieve Hoffman is a civil defense attorney in Upper Arlington. She is a moderate voter who has previously volunteered with Republican campaigns in Ohio but has been called to pro-choice activism in the wake of Dobbs.

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Opinion: Will men support abortion rights in November election? - The Columbus Dispatch

Brett Sutton| Reno Gazette Journal

This opinion column was submitted by Brett Sutton, an attorney and mediator whose practice is focused on labor and employment law.

As reported in the Reno Gazette Journal, Attorney General Aaron Ford is refusing to debate his opponent, attorney Sigal Chattah, before the upcoming Nevadageneral election due to a highly offensive and inappropriate private text Chattah reportedly sent a blogger last year ("Ford calls Chattah's comment racist, says he won't debate her," July 31).

Ford has every right to condemn the offensive remark.However, his refusal to debate Chattah is an enormous disservice to Nevada voters and he should immediately reconsider. A debate prior to a general election is not for the benefit of the candidates rather, it is for the benefit of the voters.

The fact that one candidatemade a highly inappropriate and offensive remark is not a justification to deprive the Nevada citizens of a debate between two individuals running for such an important constitutional office. Since the beginning of our nation, public debates have been a critical component of the election process and those who refuse to take part are, in the view of many, proving themselves unqualified to hold an important office.

Rather than refusing to debate, if Ford believes Chattahs comments to be racist as he has publicly alleged he absolutely should debate her openly and expose her as such.It is even more important that he do so, given the serious nature of his accusation and the importance of the position for which both are running.

Furthermore, the mere fact that Chattah made an offensive remark does not excuse Ford from a civil debate that would help all voters to better evaluate his performance as attorney general.

For example, there have been highly publicized media reports about an out-of-state COVID testing company, paid tens of millionsin tax dollars, whose tests reportedly were found by Nevada state scientists to be so inaccurate and unreliable as to be considered catastrophic. The reports, based upon an investigation by the nonprofit journalist group ProPublica, concluded that the company used political connections, including contracting with the sons of a close friend to the governor, to fast-track its state laboratory license application and secure testing agreements … and obtain lucrative contracts for vital COVID testing from Nevada government officials.

As the top law enforcement officer in the state, Ford should be called upon in a debate to publicly explain what, if anything, his office has done to investigate this extremely disturbing report.

Attorney General Fordsactions during the controversial statewide COVID lockdown imposed by Gov.Sisolak also should be an important topic for a debate before the election.Of most importance is the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimous ruling in December 2020 that Gov. Sisolaks emergency actions imposed on houses of worship across Nevada were in clear violation of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

Violating the sacred First Amendment religious rights of their own states citizens is a serious offense for any elected official. Given that Fords office supported and advocated in favor of Gov.Sisolaks unconstitutional conduct in this instance, Ford should be confronted in a public debate to explain his actions and positions in that case.

Many are rightly concerned with what positions Ford might take in the future with regard to the constitutional rights of Nevada citizens and what he will do to protect those rights.

Voters of every party affiliation, and specifically members of the Nevada press, should publicly call upon Ford to fulfill his obligation to the voters of this state by debating his opponent prior to the upcoming general election.

Brett Sutton is an attorney and mediator whose practice is focused on labor and employment law. He is a Nevada Leadership Council member of the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) and has held leadership positions in variousindustry organizations.

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Aaron Ford's refusal to debate is a disservice to the public - Reno Gazette Journal

The ACLJ is gearing up to file an application with the United States Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari in our case defending prayer. We will petition the Supreme Court to address a question of fundamental significance that has plagued the lower courts across the country for decades: whether voluntarily seeking out and being offended by government conduct that allegedly violates the Establishment Clause creates an injury in fact sufficient to allow a complainant standing (i.e. the ability to bring a legal challenge).

It's often called offended observer standing and it has plagued our federal judiciary for years, improperly allowing anti-Christian forces to run to federal court and claim a constitutional crisis every time they see a public official in any way practice his or her Christian faith, such as praying, or even the public recognition of our Judeo-Christian heritage as a nation, such as under God in the Pledge of Allegiance. Its high time we set the record straight.

Our decision to file with the Supreme Court follows a lengthy legal battle that began in 2014 to defend Americas long-time tradition of calling for prayer a freedom our Founders sought to secure, rather than prohibit, through the ratification of the First Amendment. Time and again, the Supreme Court has upheld government involvement in and/or association with prayer including legislative prayer, prayer in the military, and prayers offered by chaplains. The City of Ocala followed suit by encouraging citizens to gather for a community prayer vigil organized by private citizens in response to a crime spree in the community. Chaplains for the police department attended and helped lead the vigil. Plaintiffs then sued arguing that the City of Ocala violated the Establishment Clause.

As we previously explained:

In 2014, the City of Ocala experienced a crime spree resulting in injury to several children. The police knew the identity of the shooters but could not persuade witnesses to come forward to testify. Consistent with community policing standards regularly employed by the Citys police department, Chief Graham met with local NAACP leaders who suggested the police department reach out to the local faith-based community for help in persuading witnesses to come forward. Chief Graham did just that.

In response, community leaders decided to hold a community prayer vigil. The vigil was planned and organized by private citizens. Volunteer chaplains, along with private citizens, led the vigil that was widely supported and well attended. At the request of the organizers for the event, Chief Graham posted a letter encouraging unity and prayer and attendance at the vigil. Atheists, offended by the idea of prayer at the vigil, demanded City officials cancel the event. Despite City officials continued explanation that it could not cancel a privately organized event, the atheists cried foul and later sued the City for allegedly promoting the vigil.

Outrageously, the atheists admit they attended the vigil to witness what they believed would be a violation of the Establishment Clause and to protest. They filed suit, and unfortunately the federal district court ruled in their favor. So we appealed to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

As we reported earlier this year, the ACLJ presented oral argument before the Eleventh Circuit in April. We asked the Eleventh Circuit to reverse the decision issued by the lower court which held that (1) plaintiffs had standing to bring the lawsuit, and (2) the Citys alleged involvement with the prayer vigil violated the First Amendment and must be held unconstitutional under the Lemon test.

On July 22, 2022, the Eleventh Circuit issued its decision agreeing that the district court applied the wrong legal test (the Lemon test). The Court reversed the district courts decision and remanded the case with instructions to evaluate the facts in light of the historical practices and understandings standard endorsed by the Supreme Court this year in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, 142 S. Ct. 2407 (2022). On the issue of standing, however, the Eleventh Circuit held that at least one plaintiff did have standing to sue.

As we have argued in our briefing throughout litigation of this case, and plan to do again in our certiorari petition, the Supreme Court in Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church & State, Inc., held that plaintiffs who fail[ed] to identify any personal injury . . . other than psychological consequence presumably produced by observation of conduct with which one disagrees does not have standing. 454 U.S. 464, 485 (1982). Simply put, federal courts are constitutionally authorized to address cases and controversies, not resolve disagreement and offense. Am. Legion v. Am. Humanist Assn, 139 S. Ct. 2067, 2101 (2019) (Gorsuch, J., concurring).

Our petition, on behalf of the City of Ocala, will likely be the first petition to raise the issue of whether offended observer standing is sufficient in the wake of the Supreme Courts decision to overrule Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971). As Justice Gorsuch, joined by Justice Thomas, recently observed, the lower courts invented observer standing for Establishment Clause cases in the 1970s in response to this Courts decision in Lemon. Am. Legion, 139 S. Ct. at 2101. Now that Lemon is a thing of the past, so too must be any notion of offended observer standing, which was tethered to Lemon itself.

We plan to file our cert. petition asking the Supreme Court to take up this important case in the coming months. This will be a major moment for prayer and religious liberty at the Supreme Court.

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ACLJ Taking Major Public Prayer Case to the U.S. Supreme Court - American Center for Law and Justice

A federal judge invoked Stranger Things, Immanuel Kant, and Friedrich Nietzsche in dismantling the states defense of Gov. Ron DeSantis Stop Woke Act, declaring the effort to constrain workplace sensitivity training violates the First and Fourteenth Amendment.

In a 44-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Mark Walker in Tallahassee ruled that the law formally, the Individual Freedom Act, or IFA amounts to an attempt by the state of Florida to impose its preferred positions about the existence of systemic racism and sexism on the workplace and public schools.

DeSantis signed the measure in April.

Floridas legislators may well find plaintiffs speech repugnant. But under our constitutional scheme, the remedy for repugnant speech is more speech, not enforced silence. Indeed, it is the purpose of the First Amendment to preserve an uninhibited marketplace of ideas in which truth will ultimately prevail, Walker wrote.

If Florida truly believes we live in a post-racial society, then let it make its case. But it cannot win the argument by muzzling its opponents. Because, without justification, the IFA attacks ideas, not conduct, plaintiffs are substantially likely to succeed on the merits of this lawsuit.

The judge also ruled, in an opinion handed down on Thursday, that the law is impermissably vague under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because its definitions of whats objectionable are too vague, even unintelligible.

Walker ruled in a complaint filed by Honeyfund.com Inc., a technology company in Clearwater with 16 employees, and Team Primo, a Black-owned Ben & Jerrys franchisee in Clearwater Beach and Tampa, that wanted to conduct sensitivity training, and by a consultant who conducts the training.

The named defendants were DeSantis, Attorney General Ashley Moody, and members of the Florida Commission on Human Relations who would enforce the law, although the injunction doesnt apply to the governor because he doesnt directly enforce the law.

The decision doesnt discuss the laws application to schools, since the plaintiffs didnt raise that matter.

Walker noted that this was not the first DeSantis initiative blocked on First Amendment grounds, citing as one example the governors bid to punish technology and social media companies.

Nikki Fried, Floridas agriculture commissioner and candidate for Democratic nomination for governor, praised the ruling in a tweet.

Freedom from uncomfortable truths is not freedom its ignorance. Limiting speech of businesses and educators is not freedom its censorship. Attacking diversity is not freedom its oppression. I welcome Judge Walkers ruling in defense of freedom of speech in our state.

Thats where the science fiction show comes in.

In the popular television series Stranger Things, the upside down describes a parallel dimension containing a distorted version of our world. Recently, Florida has seemed like a First Amendment upside down. Normally, the First Amendment bars the state from burdening speech, while private actors may burden speech freely. But in Florida, the First Amendment apparently bars private actors from burdening speech, while the state may burden speech freely, Walker wrote.

Now, like the heroine in Stranger Things, this court is once again asked to pull Florida back from the upside down.

The law, referred to in the ruling by its initials, IFA, bars employers from conducting workplace trainings that allegedly promulgate eight disfavored concepts. For example, that:

Walker concluded that, in addition to its constitutional flaws, the measure violates the Florida Civil Rights Act of 1992, patterned under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Both ban employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy, national origin, age, handicap, or marital status.

In the end, defendants suggest that there is nothing to see here. They say the IFA does nothing more than ban race discrimination in employment. But to compare the diversity trainings plaintiffs wish to hold to true hostile work environments rings hollow. Worse still, it trivializes the freedom protected by Title VII and the FCRA to suggest that the two are the same, he wrote.

Walker rejected the states argument that the law restricts conduct, not speech that is, forcing employees to attend training sessions. He reasoned that the law forbids only mandatory attendance at trainings endorsing the viewpoints that the law deems unacceptable employers could require workers to read a book complaining about woke culture, for example, but not endorsing critical race theory.

Worse still, a nonprofit corporation devoted to promoting the idea that white privilege exists could not hold a required meeting at which it endorses the concept of white privilege. But a nonprofit holding the opposite view could freely hold meetings criticizing the concept of white privilege, Walker wrote.

The bottom line is that the only way to determine whether the IFA bars a mandatory activity is to look to the viewpoint expressed at that activity to look at speech. Plainly, the IFA regulates speech, he continued.

He elaborated in a footnote:

The plaintiff companies intend the trainings to send a message about their values. And people would understand as much. Plaintiff companies incur significant costs to hold these trainings, not just the cost of paying someone to conduct them but also the cost in lost productivity from every employee halting work and attending. Given the high financial cost of holding a mandatory training, it is very likely that outsiders would interpret holding such trainings as sending a message about the companys priorities.

Walker rejected the states argument that Title VII, the federal law banning workplace discrimination with respect to compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, might pose an unconstitutional restriction on speech.

That prohibition on conduct includes a bar on requiring people to work in a discriminatorily hostile or abusive environment. In turn, to be sure, it can be mostly speech that creates this environment, but only when such speech is both objectively and subjectively offensive and when it is sufficiently severe or pervasive, Walker wrote.

He cited the example of a white worker dressing in a gorilla suit to mock Black employees the day before Juneteenth. (It happened.)

The IFA is the inverse. It targets speech endorsing any of eight concepts and only incidentally burdens conduct. Even the slightest endorsement of any of the eight concepts at any required employment activity violates the statute; the IFA requires no evidence that the statement be even subjectively offensive. Nor does the IFA require that the statement create a severely or pervasively hostile work environment. Thus, the IFA, by design, provides no shelter for core protected speech.

The state claimed the authority to prevent employers from foisting speech that the state finds repugnant on a captive audience of employees.

Walker respinded: Not so. The First Amendment does not give the state license to censor speech because it finds it repugnant, no matter how captive the audience.

And even assuming the IFA serves a compelling government interest like prohibiting discrimination it is not narrowly tailored. In large part, this is because the FCRA already prohibited much of what defendants claim the IFA aims to prohibit. For example, a diversity and inclusion training could be so offensive, and so hostile to white employees, that it could create a hostile work environment. That is already illegal as both parties acknowledge.

Many people would object to the concept that members of one race, color, sex, or national origin are morally superior to members of another race, color, sex, or national origin, Walker noted.

Of course, the IFA bans much more: such as suggesting that white privilege exists or that people should consider another persons race or sex when interacting with them . In other words, even assuming some concepts are proscribable which they are not the IFA still prohibits the endorsement of many widely-accepted ideas, he wrote.

In sum, the IFA sweeps up an enormous amount of protected speech to ban a sliver of offensive conduct that exists somewhere between the trainings plaintiffs wish to hold and what the FCRA already bars. It is, to borrow a phrase from defense counsel, self-evident. The IFA is not narrowly tailored. And so, the IFA violates the First Amendment.

The state argued it would be OK under the law to discuss critical race theory as an objective concept without endorsing it. (This is where Kant and Nietzsche come in, via a footnote.) But, as a practical matter, an employers discussion of these concepts no matter how objective it may be will invariably lend credence to them, Walker responded.

The IFA is designed to exorcise these viewpoints out of the marketplace of ideas Gov. DeSantis went so far as to call it the STOP WOKE Act at a press conference with children waving anti-critical race theory signs. It thus comes as no surprise that permissible discussion of these concepts turns on objectivity an inherently vague term that fails to give the person of ordinary intelligence a reasonable opportunity to know what is prohibited, Walker wrote.

Accordingly, as this objectivity standard commands the entire statute, the IFA is impermissibly vague in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

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DeSantis loses another First Amendment fight, this one over 'Stop Woke Act' - Florida Phoenix