Editorial: One of worst Florida legislative sessions ever

This editorial reflects the view of the Palm Beach Post Editorial Board, not of the newsroom.

Florida’s 2023 legislative session will go down as one of the most shameful in the state’s history. The GOP majority went far past adopting mere conservative measures, advancing a reactionary agenda replete with bigotry, misogyny, gun-toting myopia and corporate giveaways. They might as well have handed the keys to our future to the Kochs and John Birchers.

That they imagined this might serve as a launching pad for Gov. Ron DeSantis’ national ambitions is just sad. It would be terrifying if such narrow-minded dogma could attract a broader audience. That's not likely but moderates of both major parties should be forewarned that if they sit back and let it, it could happen.

Even if DeSantis’ White House ambitions fall flat, Floridians need to resist him at home, where, thanks to his obedient majority reversing the “resign-to-run” requirement, his throne in the state capitol will await him when he returns from months of campaigning. Dust it off and he’s good to go on as Governor.

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Much has been made of DeSantis’ culture war, as if one could dismiss the various measures that comprise it as just so much political messaging. But these laws have real impacts on real people.

We now have a six-week abortion law that amounts to a complete ban, since many women don’t even know they’re pregnant at that stage. In addition, a practical impact of that law is that it stops some physicians from administering care out of fear they might violate it, thus putting some women’s lives on the line, let alone all women’s right to choose.

We now also have laws that further marginalize the LGBTQ+ community and deny medical procedures to trans individuals, bigots’ flavor of the year for discrimination.

We have public school systems increasingly drained of public tax money, in order to feed the GOP obsession with private schools.

After one mass murder after another, even of our own school children in Parkland, our lawmakers have refused to ban AR-15-style weapons or other long guns. They tried this spring — but backed down after an uproar – to lower the purchase age for those weapons. But they succeeded in making it easier to walk in public with a concealed gun, without a permit.

In a handout to Florida fertilizer producers, our lawmakers produced some fertilizer of their own: a law to help the companies dispose of radioactive waste on the cheap by opening the door for its use in paving material. The runoff from those roads could contaminate aquifers, waterways and estuaries. Cities and towns that try to restrict fertilizer use to help limit contamination, meanwhile, now have been preempted from doing so.

Lawmakers unleashed some public money to help build affordable housing. But let’s not forget they helped cause the state’s affordable housing crisis by diverting money set aside specifically for housing, for years. Not only that, but the single biggest driver of housing unaffordability in recent years has been the soaring cost of property insurance. And though they sprinkled in a few consumer-friendly provisions as an afterthought, they did nothing to address the root causes of that property insurance crisis. Instead they just gave the industry a huge present, by making it hard for anyone who gets screwed by their insurer to sue.

Florida lawmakers did adopt tougher criminal penalties for acts of antisemitism, for which we should all be thankful. But over the past year they also restricted race history education and programs that would advance diversity, equity and inclusion statewide. That, while gerrymandering election districts and tweaking election laws to dilute ballot access of Blacks and former inmates, who tend to vote Democratic. Lawsuits might reverse those appalling efforts but meanwhile, for years, those voting rights are being denied. That’s not an accident.

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Speaking of the absence of accidents, at least we’re focused on getting Disney’s monorail inspected.

We must stop this madness.

To that end, over the next several Saturdays, The Palm Beach Post will summarize major legislation enacted during the session and provide a list of how each state representative and senator from our county voted on them. We start this Saturday, with school vouchers.

Take a look at how the people you put in office conducted your business, addressed your concerns and stood up for your rights. You know what to do next.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Editorial: DeSantis gets wish list of far-right laws that deny rights