Today a federal judge tossed a case which had been brought against Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law. As you may recall, that law restricted instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation in K-3rd grade and then limited such instruction in later grades to material that was age appropriate.
U.S. District Judge Allen Winsor on Wednesday issued a 21-page decision dismissing a revised lawsuit filed by students, parents and teachers, who argued the law is unconstitutional. Winsor ruled that the plaintiffs had not “alleged sufficient facts” to show they had legal standing to challenge the law.
“Plaintiffs have shown a strident disagreement with the new law, and they have alleged facts to show its very existence causes them deep hurt and disappointment,” Winsor wrote. “But to invoke a federal court’s jurisdiction, they must allege more. Their failure to do so requires dismissal.”…
In an attempt to show standing, the revised version sought to link the law with harm…
But in Wednesday’s ruling, Winsor said such arguments were insufficient.
For instance, he wrote that the Miami-Dade School Board’s decision to reject the resolution about LGBTQ History Month “does not create a particularized injury; it shows at most a generalized grievance shared by all who would have preferred the opposite outcome.”
It almost sounds like Judge Winsor told them the law doesn’t care about your feelings. Gov. DeSantis wasn’t a defendant in the case, but the dismissal will still be seen as a win since he’s been associated with the law. But that wasn’t the only court action connected to the governor today. Andrew Warren, the former state attorney who was fired by DeSantis last August announced today that he was filing a new appeal to get himself reinstated.
Andrew Warren, a twice-elected state attorney for Hillsborough County, filed the appeal late Wednesday. It comes a month after a federal judge in Tallahassee dismissed his lawsuit on technical grounds while agreeing with Warren that the Republican governor fired him inappropriately.
“We’re asking the Florida Supreme Court to affirm that finding and instruct the Governor to follow the law and reinstate me to office. We’re asking them to reiterate that no one is above the law — not even the Governor,” Warren said in a statement. He is also asking a federal appeals court to reinstate him…
Warren is citing last month’s ruling by U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle, who said that while federal law prevents him from returning Warren to office though a lawsuit centering on state law, he agreed that DeSantis’ actions violated both Warren’s First Amendment rights and the Florida Constitution.
Hinkle, who was appointed by Democratic President Bill Clinton, said the evidence showed that DeSantis had no basis to find Warren incompetent or derelict in his duties, the two reasons cited for the suspension.
I honestly have no idea if Hinkle’s opinion will help get Warren reinstated but this case, like the other one, will be seen through the lens of Gov. DeSantis political future. Either Warren will be reinstated and this will become a talking point we hear for the next two years or he’ll lose and we’ll just hear about Judge Hinkle’s ruling.
Speaking of Ron DeSantis and the media, Molly Jong-Fast is still doing her best to work the refs in advance of his presidential run. Today she has a story up at Vanity Fair titled “Ron DeSantis Shouldn’t be Covered Like Just Another Republican.” The gist of her argument is that DeSantis is an authoritarian like Trump who shouldn’t be normalized. That’s media codespeak for tilting coverage against him as hard and as often as humanly possible.
DeSantis is like Shakespeare compared to the former president. He doesn’t talk about grabbing people by their genitals or dating his daughter. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that these days Trump is the poor man’s DeSantis, which is pretty ironic because DeSantis created himself in the image of Trump.
But most pressing is that both of these men are cut from the same autocratic cloth. They are not the kind of leaders that we’re accustomed to seeing in a democracy. And yet some mainstream media outlets are pushing the narrative that DeSantis is a kinder, gentler version of Trump, who I’ve already argued should not be covered like a normal presidential contender…
To call DeSantis a culture warrior dangerously understates what the man is capable of. He is the Genghis Khan of social issues, using every opportunity to target and demonize groups that have already been targeted and demonized throughout history.
I’ve made this point many times before but progressive always seem to miss that the Republican culture war is almost always defensive in nature. No one was talking about restricting teachers from instructing Kindergartners about gender identity until people realized there were teachers out there heavily invested in passing on their leftist politics to kids. Sometimes, parents just decide to say no.
Over the weekend, images allegedly showing Kayla Lemieux, a shop teacher at Oakville Trafalgar High School in the Halton District School Board (HDSB) outside of Toronto, Ontario, made a splash online.
MORE: https://t.co/R7hxZKK2Ir pic.twitter.com/rF3d0upA7V
— Rebel News (@RebelNewsOnline) September 22, 2022
Discussion about this post