Passing a national anthem law in Florida is a tone-deaf idea

There’s been plenty of debate over how athletes should respond when the national anthem is played before contests — a heated and polarizing dialogue that began in 2016 when former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick began kneeling during "The Star-Spangled Banner" and rose in intensity throughout 2020 when countless athletes adopted the gesture following numerous police-related killings involving Black Americans.

That said, has there ever been a genuine, sustained hue and cry over whether the national anthem should be played at all during sporting events?

Nope. Not really.

For example, in a 2020 poll conducted by The Washington Post and the University of Maryland, 84% of the respondents supported playing the national anthem before games.

Meanwhile, a 2021 Morning Consult poll found that 76% of those surveyed — including clear majorities among respondents who were people of color — agreed that "The Star-Spangled Banner" should be performed prior to an athletic competition.

Given such general sentiments, there is no compelling reason why the Florida Legislature should rush to pass a bill proposed by state Rep. Tommy Gregory, R-Sarasota, that would require the national anthem to be played before pro sports events in the state.

Indeed there's absolutely no compelling reason why Gregory's bill should ever become a law.

More: Sarasota lawmaker's bill requires Florida's pro sports teams to play national anthem

At a time when Floridians are increasingly besieged by leaders who seem obsessed with micromanaging every aspect of their lives as citizens — from expressing the right to assemble to simply navigating the always-present specter of COVID — the last thing Florida needs is yet another needless decree designed to solve a problem that doesn't exist.

In making the case for his anthem bill, Gregory noted the controversy that briefly surfaced last year when the Dallas Mavericks stopped playing the national anthem for a short period before its NBA games — a step that the team’s owner, Mark Cuban, said was taken as a gesture of solidarity for the social justice work being done by numerous pro basketball players.

Soon enough, however, the Mavericks’ move drew an eventual reaction from Texas politicians, who promptly passed a bill — subtly titled “The Star-Spangled Banner Protection Act” — that effectively makes it illegal for sports teams to forego playing the anthem.

Gregory acknowledged that while no sports team in Florida has attempted to skip playing the national anthem — or even contemplated doing so, for that matter — it was critical for his Texas-style bill to become law to “proactively ensure it cannot" ever happen in our state.

Sorry, state representative, but when a law is being proposed to address an “issue” that has shown no discernible sign of truly being an issue — all in order to prevent that non-issue from possibly becoming an issue in the future, even though there’s nothing to remotely suggest it will ever become an issue down the line — there is only one conclusion for us to reach:

There’s no need for the law.

At all.

Period.

Every day and every night across the “free state of Florida,” our national anthem is being freely and routinely performed — with varying degrees of skill, it must be said — before myriad sporting events.

And every day and every night across our state, Floridians eagerly rise when "The Star-Spangled Banner" begins — and heartily cheer when it comes to its stirring end.

There's no law that is forcing this to happen. And there's no need to force this to happen by turning Gregory’s tone-deaf anthem bill into actual law.

— The Sarasota Herald-Tribune Editorial Board

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Editorial: Florida doesn't need a law to play the national anthem