The Full Belmonte, 6/4/2023
Judge Finds Tennessee Law Aimed at Restricting Drag Shows Unconstitutional
The law, one of the first aimed at curbing drag performances in front of children, had been on hold for nearly two months as the legal battle went on.
Emily Cochrane, who lives in Nashville and covers the American South, has reported on the law and its impact across Tennessee.
June 3, 2023
“A federal judge said late Friday that a law in Tennessee aimed at restricting drag shows was unconstitutional, saying it was overly broad and violated the First Amendment.
The ruling is an initial victory for supporters of L.G.B.T.Q. rights after weeks of turmoil and confusion over the law’s language and how it would affect not only drag artists in the state, but also transgender, nonbinary and other gender-nonconforming people. Tennessee, which passed the law this year with the stated goal of protecting children, was among more than a dozen states that passed measures restricting L.G.B.T.Q. rights.
Although only Shelby County, where the lawsuit was filed, is explicitly prevented from enforcing the law, the decision by Judge Thomas L. Parker of the Federal District Court in Memphis sent a clear signal about the statute that could affect enforcement of the law and lead to challenges elsewhere in Tennessee.
The attorney general of Tennessee, Jonathan Skrmetti, who said he expected to appeal the decision, maintained that the ruling did not affect the rest of the state. ‘The Adult Entertainment Act remains in effect outside of Shelby County,’ he said. He added that the law’s language ‘is rooted in the U.S. Supreme Court’s long-established First Amendment precedent.’
Gov. Bill Lee signed the law in early March, but it had been on hold after a Memphis theater company, Friends of George’s, challenged it in court and Judge Parker issued a temporary injunction.
Friends of George’s, which frequently puts on productions featuring drag or L.G.B.T.Q. actors, argued that the wording of the law was vague and threatened its constitutional right to freedom of speech and its income from performances….” Read more at New York Times
Florida taxpayers pick up bill for Ron DeSantis’s culture war lawsuits
Governor’s Disney battle and extremist policies are met with costly lawsuits covered by ‘blank check’ from Republican legislature
“Since Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis took office in 2019 and embarked on his culture wars, lawsuits from various communities whose rights have been violated have been stacking up against the far-right Republican.
As DeSantis fights the lawsuits with what critics have described as a blank check from the state’s supermajority Republican legislature, the mounting legal costs have come heavily at the expense of Florida’s taxpayers.
In recent years, DeSantis’s ultra-conservative legislative agenda has drawn ire from a slew of marginalized communities as well as major corporations including Disney. The so-called ‘don’t say gay’ bill, abortion bans and prohibition of African American studies are just a few of many DeSantis’s extremist policies that have been met with costly lawsuits in a state where residents are already struggling with costs of living.
‘The list of legal challenges precipitating from DeSantis’s unconstitutional laws is endless,’ the Democratic state senator Lori Berman said.
‘We’ve seen Floridians rightly sue many if not all of the governor’s legislative priorities, including laws that restrict drag shows for kids, prohibit Chinese citizens from owning homes and land in Florida, suppress young and Black and brown voters, ban gender-affirming care and threaten supportive parents with state custody of their children, and of course, all the retaliatory legislation waged against Disney for coming out in support of the LGBTQ+ community,’ she said.
As a result of the mounting lawsuits against DeSantis, the governor’s legal costs, which the Miami Herald reported last December to cost at least $16.7m, have been soaring.
In DeSantis’s legal fight against Disney following the corporation’s condemnation of his anti-LGBTQ+ laws, it is going to cost the governor and his handpicked board nearly $1,300 per hour in legal fees as they look into how the corporation discovered a loophole in DeSantis’s plan to acquire governing rights over Disney World, Insider reports.
‘Disney is a perfect example. It doesn’t hurt any Floridians. There is nothing. It’s creating a legal issue out of nowhere and now Disney sued so they have to respond and that is going to cost taxpayers’ money. The whole Disney case is just because of DeSantis’s ego and his hurt feelings,’ the Democratic state senator Tina Polsky said.
‘Taxpayers are paying to foot the bills to pass unconstitutional bills and to keep up with his petty vengeance,’ she said, adding, ‘I don’t think they’re aware at all … They’re too brainwashed at this point that they wouldn’t even care.’
Meanwhile, in another case covered by the Orlando Sentinel, DeSantis’s administration has turned to the elite conservative Washington DC-based law firm Cooper & Kirk to defend the governor against his slew of anti-woke laws. The firm’s lawyers charge $725 hourly, according to contracts reviewed by Orlando Sentinel. As of June 2022, the state authorized nearly $2.8m for legal services from just Cooper & Kirk alone, the outlet reports.
With mounting taxpayer-funded legal costs against DeSantis’s legislative agenda, critics ranging from civil rights organizations to the state’s Democratic lawmakers have lambasted DeSantis’s policies as unconstitutional and mere political stunts designed to propel him to the frontlines of the GOP primary.
‘DeSantis went to Harvard for his [law degree]. This is someone who should understand the constraints placed on him and the state by the United States constitution and the Florida constitution. He knows those constraints, but he doesn’t care. His goal is to intentionally pass unconstitutional laws and set up legal challenges in order for the conservative supreme court to overturn long held protections,’ Berman said….
As DeSantis continues to fight his costly legal battles, the state’s supermajority Republican legislature appears to encourage him wholly.
‘We’re in a litigious society,’ the state senate president, Kathleen Passidomo, told the Tallahassee Democrat while the senate budget chair, Doug Broxson, told the outlet: ‘We want the governor to be in a comfortable position to speak his mind.’
With Republicans rushing to DeSantis’s defense, perhaps the most glaring example of the legislature’s endorsement of his legal wars is the $16m incorporated into the state’s $117bn budget to be used exclusively for his litigation expenses.
Speaking to the Guardian, the state’s Democratic house leader, Fentrice Driskell, called the budget a ‘carte blanche’ from Republicans and the result of zero accountability.
‘The legislature is supposed to be a check on executive power. By giving him a carte blanche to go and fight these wars in court, it’s basically just saying that there are no checks and balances when it comes to the state government in Florida,’ said Driskell…..” Read more at The Guardian
In a Contentious Lawmaking Season, Red States Got Redder and Blue Ones Bluer
With single-party statehouse control at its highest level in decades, legislators across much of the country leaned into cultural issues and bulldozed the opposition.
“America’s state capitals are as polarized as they have been in decades, with lawmakers imposing unflinchingly conservative or liberal agendas this year, even in politically diverse places.
The 2022 election brought single-party control of the governor’s office and legislature to 39 states, the most in at least three decades.
Many of the 22 Republican-led states pushed new curbs on abortion, sweeping restrictions on gender transitions for youths and laws limiting discussion about sexuality in school classrooms. Democrats, who have full control in 17 states, passed new gun control measures, set limits on carbon emissions, and created safe havens for abortion and medical care for transgender people.
The result was that the legislative season, which has ended in much of the country, left an even wider divide between Republican and Democratic states on the country’s thorniest social issues. In some Republican states, lawmakers also took aim at the powers of Democratic officeholders or sought to limit local control in liberal-leaning cities.
“We’ve always known that California was progressive, Texas was conservative, but it now feels like almost every state is kind of falling into one of those categories,” said Tim Storey, the chief executive of the National Conference of State Legislatures, a nonpartisan group.
Some of the states that pursued ambitious partisan agendas had long been single-party strongholds. In Washington, where Democrats have had full control of state government for 14 of the last 19 years, lawmakers banned the sale of AR-15-style weaponsand enshrined protections for abortion and transgender medical care in law. In North Dakota, where Republicans have led the government since 1995, officials banned transition care for minors, outlawed abortion and barred materials deemed to be sexually explicit from the children’s section of libraries.
But even in states with recent histories as political battlegrounds, lawmakers pushed hard this year to the left or right, potentially leaving a significant segment of residents alienated.
In Florida, which voted twice for Barack Obama but has since swung decisively toward Republicans, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed laws restricting abortion, banning transgender medical care for minors, loosening the requirements to impose the death penaltyand allowing concealed guns to be carried without a permit. In Minnesota, where Democrats flipped a legislative chamber last year to narrowly take full control of the statehouse, Gov. Tim Walz signed bills codifying abortion rights, legalizing recreational marijuana and expanding voting rights for felons, a spree of liberal wins that drew the attention of Mr. Obama….” Read more at New York Times