Judge Blocks DeSantis’s Anti-Protest Bill, Compares It to Jim Crow-Era Legislation

Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker successful Tallahassee blocked Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s anti-protest bill, saying that the backlash from officials to radical celebrating Juneteenth and engaging successful peaceful protestation mirrors the racist backlash to protests against Jim Crow laws during the 1960s.

The Florida instrumentality was enacted successful April and received harsh disapproval for new definitions of rioting and incitement that empower authorities to apprehension anyone who attends a protestation wherever unit occurs.

Judge Walker wrote that DeSantis and Florida officials “conflated a assemblage solemnisation of a national vacation commemorating the extremity of slavery with a protest.”

“In 1956 and 1961, Florida’s anti-riot laws were utilized to suppress activities threatening the state’s Jim Crow presumption quo. However, the explanation of ‘riot’ and ‘inciting a riot’ were not intelligibly defined by Florida Statute. It was not until 1975 that the Florida Supreme Court explained that some terms, though undefined by statute, should beryllium construed according to their common-law definitions,” helium wrote.

“What’s past is prologue,” helium added.

Walker issued a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of the caller explanation of rioting nether the Combating Public Disorder Act.