Social media bill is un-constitutional
Ari Cohn, J.D.
Special to Historic City News

Gov. Ron DeSantis claims his “Transparency in Technology Act” would protect free speech. The bill restricts how social media sites moderate objectionable content and requires “detailed definitions” of what content is prohibited. But the bill’s entire premise is backwards. As private entities, social media companies are not bound by First Amendment restrictions. In fact, they have their own First Amendment right to determine who may publish using their websites, and what messages will be allowed.

St Augustine attorney Jane West, Policy & Planning Director for 1,000 Friends of Florida, asked the Historic City News editorial review board to evaluate several pieces of what she described as “very damaging bills” that are moving forward quickly in the current session of the Florida legislature.

Pamela C. Marsh, Executive Director
Florida First Amendment Foundation
Special to Historic City News

Florida lawmakers are at it again this year. Your legislators want to make even more difficult to access important government information.

By GENE POLICINSKI
Freedom Forum
Special to Historic City News

There is a reason we need a free press, despite its faults and foibles: Democracy won’t work without it.

If approved, Florida Senate Bill SB-284, and companion House Bill HB-55, entitled “Building Design”, will take away another tool from local government. This legislation seeks to remove the authority of local governments to regulate building designs in many areas.

Michael Gold, Trustee
HISTORIC CITY NEWS

I am a native Floridian.  A St Augustinian, to be exact.  When the world was young, my business took me to Georgia where I had occasion to travel to a few large cities as well as a state-full of small rural communities.  After all those years spent growing up here, the southeastern-most state in the nation, it was during those seven years in Georgia that I learned something else about me.  I am also “a Southerner”; a heritage to be celebrated.

I love the new Castillo de San Marcos stamp

Derek Boyd Hankerson
St. Augustine

I recently learned that the United States Postal Service issued a new stamp featuring a popular historic attraction in our town.

The Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers informed local Historic City News reporters that they oppose legislation urged by Gov. Ron DeSantis addressing “affrays, riots, routs, and unlawful assemblies” as a too broad an attack on the First Amendment and the right to assemble. The proposed legislation is a solution in search of a problem, the Association said.