#ACLU of Florida | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 1 year

Text

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has signed the “Protections of Medical Conscience Act,” a law that allows healthcare providers or payors to deny service on the basis of “a conscience-based objection,” including any ethical, moral, or religious beliefs. The bill provides no definition for what constitutes a “moral” or “ethical” belief.

The law seeks to protect health care providers and payers from the “threat of discrimination for providing conscience-based health care.” However, advocates worry it’ll be used to deny LGBTQ+ people gender-affirming care, HIV-prevention medication, and other essential and life-saving care.

The law allows any medical provider — including doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers, pharmacists, mental health professionals, lab technicians, nursing home workers, and hospital administrators — as well as insurance companies and payment entities, the right to deny care on the basis of any conscientious objection. This care can include refusing to conduct research and recordkeeping or denying medical tests, diagnoses, referrals, medications, and therapy, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) notes.

The newly signed law says denial of care can’t be based on a patient’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, but it provides no protections on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Additionally, the law also allows healthcare employers to discriminate in hiring and bars medical boards from disciplining doctors for spreading misinformation, essentially forcing employers to keep workers who refuse to do their jobs, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) noted.

In a statement, the HRC said the newly signed law “creates a license to discriminate by allowing healthcare employers to discriminate in hiring, and it bars medical boards from disciplining doctors for spreading misinformation.”

Kara Gross, legislative director and senior policy counsel of the ACLU of Florida, wrote, “This bill is shocking in its breadth, vagueness, and government overreach into the private sector and regulated businesses. It goes far beyond any alleged claims of religious freedom.”

Gross notes that anyone in the medical field — including at public and private schools, colleges, and universities — could choose to deny service to someone they personally dislike. Medical workers could refuse to assist in an active medical emergency, such as helping an unwed mother to give birth. Medical office clerks could refuse to return patient calls, and pharmacists could refuse to dispense contraceptives or medications to heal sexually transmitted infections, citing their “ethical” or “moral” beliefs.

Brandon Wolf, press secretary for the LGBTQ+ organization Equality Florida, told the Pensacola News Journal, “This puts patients in harm’s way, is antithetical to the job of health care providers, and puts the most vulnerable Floridians in danger.”

“Our state should be in the business of increasing access to medical care, not giving providers and companies a sweeping carve out of nondiscrimination laws,” Wolf added. “Shame on the Governor for putting Floridians’ health at risk to score cheap, political points.”

DeSantis was joined at the signing ceremony for the new law by State Surgeon General and Department of Health Secretary Joseph Ladapo. He has spoken out against science-based federal guidelines that support gender-affirming care for transgender teens, citing debunked studies about transgender people.

In July 2020, Ladapo appeared in a viral video as part of a group called America’s Frontline Doctors. The video was organized by the Tea Party Patriots, a right-wing group backed by wealthy Republican donors.

The group in the video, which had no epidemiologists or immunologists, promoted the anti-malaria medication hydroxychloroquine as a “cure” for COVID-19, said that face masks don’t slow the virus’s spread, and that COVID-19 is less deadly than the flu — all three claims are untrue. Lapado has written numerous op-eds repeating the video’s false claims.

The video also featured Dr. Stella Immanuel, a pediatrician and religious minister who has said that “demonic seed” inserted into sleeping individuals causes endometriosis and ovarian cysts.

26 notes · View notes

benandstevesposts · 1 month

Text

Community members raised concerns that attacks are attempts to erase its history and gentrify its neighborhoods.

The calmness of the wind reverberated across the burial ground as Beverly Steele motioned to her mother’s grave in Oak Hill Cemetery. Three months ago, they buried her here, just 12 days shy of her 102nd birthday.

It’s not uncommon for residents in the majority-Black, unincorporated community of Royal, Florida, to live past 100 years old. The Rev. Matthew Beard, the oldest resident in the community’s history, lived to be 115.

On a recent February afternoon, Steele, dressed in her Sunday best, peered out at the acres and acres of land surrounding Oak Hill Cemetery, also known as the Royal Cemetery. As she reminisced about her mother, she also remembered her aunt, who was called on as the community’s local historian. She could recall who had the first brick house, the first postmaster, and the three founding families—Hollies, Picketts, and Andersons—of the community.

The sounds of large trucks chugging down the narrow road near the cemetery snap Steele back to today’s reality. Mere miles away from the site is Interstate 75, which split the community of Royal in half 50 years ago. A few miles from there is the old Monarch Road cemetery, or old slave cemetery as the locals call it. It, too, is split in half by a paved road. A family lives on the primary site where most of the headstones can be seen. It is the cemetery where Steele’s great-great-great-grandfather — and one of the community’s co-founders — is buried.

Tucked away, 55 miles north of Orlando, Royal’s estimated 1,200 Black residents still live on the inherited 40-acre plots from the Homestead Act of 1862. The close-knit community is located in the city of Wildwood, which in the past two decades has grown in population to 150,000. The 77-year-old Steele and other Royal residents say the rapid growth of The Villages, a retirement community that borders Wildwood, is part of the constant development efforts upending their lives.

Recent plans for highways, affordable housing units, and industrial use projects are disrupting their peace and comfort. In some cases, residents have been pressured to sell their land. Several community members raised concerns to Capital B that these attacks are attempts to erase its history and gentrify its neighborhoods. They also fear the increased traffic and industrial pollution from the projects will cause detrimental health effects in its community, primarily elders.

This isn’t the first time Royal citizens have come up against efforts to build in their community.

Residents and Sumter County commissioners rejected a plan in 1988 to construct a turnpike through Royal. In 2019, state lawmakers approved a bill to create the Northern Florida Extension, or turnpike project, to build three roads across rural central Florida, including Royal. Read more in the complete report here!

4 notes · View notes

callese · 1 year

Text

#Florida #ron desantis #abortion #this is so fucked up #this is amerikkka #aclu

15 notes · View notes

puzzlingfrost · 8 months

Text

I hate Florida, fuck DeSantis

#vent #florida #ACLU #ron desantis #ugh

3 notes · View notes

kp777 · 2 years

Video

youtube

Gen Z House Candidate Maxwell Frost After Florida Win: 'Don't Count Out Young People'

NBC News

Aug 23, 2022

#fl-10 #maxwell frost #gen z #progressive politics #gun violence #pro choice #aclu #march for our lives #rising star #charlie crist #florida #youth vote

2 notes · View notes

fullhalalalchemist · 1 year

Text

URGENT: 🚨🚨EARN IT ACT IS BACK IN THE SENATE 🚨🚨 TUMBLR’S NSFW BAN HITTING THE ENTIRE INTERNET THIS SUMMER 2023

April 28, 2023

I’m so sorry for the long post but please please please pay attention and spread this

What is the EARN IT Act?

The EARN IT Act (s. 1207) has been roundly condemned by nearly every major LGBTQ+ advocacy and human rights organization in the country.

This is the third time the Senate has been trying to force this through, and I talked about it last year. It is a bill that claims "protects children and victims against CSAM" by creating an unelected and politically appointed national commission of law enforcement specialists to dictate "best practices" that websites all across the nation will be forced to follow. (Keep in mind, most websites in the world are created in the US, so this has global ramifications). These "best practices" would include killing encryption so that any law enforcement can scan and see every single message, dm, photo, cloud storage, data, and any website you have every so much as glanced at. Contrary to popular belief, no they actually can't already do that. These "best practices" also create new laws for "removing CSAM" online, leading to mass censorship of non-CSAM content like what happened to tumblr. Keep in mind that groups like NCOSE, an anti-LGBT hate group, will be allowed on this commission. If websites don't follow these best practices, they lose their Section 230 protections, leading to mass censorship either way.

Section 230 is foundational to modern online communications. It's the entire reason social media exists. It grants legal protection to users and websites, and says that websites aren't responsible for what users upload online unless it's criminal. Without Section 230, websites are at the mercy of whatever bullshit regulatory laws any and every US state passes. Imagine if Texas and Florida were allowed to say what you can and can't publish and access online. That is what will happen if EARN IT passes. (For context, Trump wanted to get rid of Section 230 because he knew it would lead to mass govt surveillance and censorship of minorities online.)

This is really not a drill. Anyone who makes or consume anything “adult” and LGBT online has to be prepared to fight Sen. Blumenthal’s EARN IT Act, brought back from the grave by a bipartisan consensus to destroy Section 230. If this bill passes, we’re going to see most, if not all, adult content and accounts removed from mainstream platforms. This will include anything related to LGBT content, including SFW fanfiction, for example. Youtube, Twitter, Reddit, Tiktok, Tumblr, all of them will be completely gutted of anything related to LGBT content, abortion healthcare, resources for victims of any type of abuse, etc. It is a right-wing fascists wet dream, which is why NCOSE is behind this bill and why another name for this bill is named in reference to NCOSE.

NCOSE used to be named Morality in Media, and has rebranded into an "anti-trafficking" organization. They are a hate group that has made millions off of being "against trafficking" while helping almost no victims and pushing for homophobic laws globally. They have successfully pushing the idea that any form of sexual expression, including talking about HEALTH, leads to sex trafficking. That's how SESTA passed. Their goal is to eliminate all sex, anything gay, and everything that goes against their idea of ‘God’ from the internet and hyper disney-fy and sanitize it. This is a highly coordinated attack on multiple fronts.

The EARN IT Act will lead to mass online censorship and surveillance. Platforms will be forced to scan their users’ communications and censor all sex-related content, including sex education, literally anything lgbt, transgender or non-binary education and support systems, aything related to abortion, and sex worker communication according to the ACLU. All this in the name of “protecting kids” and “fighting CSAM”, both of which the bill does nothing of the sort. In fact it makes fighting CSEM even harder.

EARN IT will open the way for politicians to define the category of “pornography" as they — or the lobbies that fund them — please. The same way that right-wing groups have successfully banned books about race and LGBT, are banning trans people from existing, all under the guise of protecting children from "grooming and exploitation", is how they will successfully censor the internet.

As long as state legislatures can tie in "fighting CSAM" to their bullshit laws, they can use EARN IT to censor and surveill whatever they want.

This is already a nightmare enough. But the bill also DESTROYS ENCRYPTION, you know, the thing protecting literally anyone or any govt entity from going into your private messages and emails and anything on your devices and spying on you.

This bill is going to finish what FOSTA/SESTA started. And that should terrify you.

Senator Blumenthal (Same guy who said ‘Facebook should ban finsta’) pushed this bill all of 2020, literally every activist (There were more than half a million signatures on this site opposing this act!) pushed hard to stop this bill. Now he brings it back, doesn’t show the text of the bill until hours later, and it’s WORSE. Instead of fixing literally anything in the bill that might actually protect kids online, Bluemnthal is hoping to fast track this and shove it through, hoping to get little media attention other than propaganda of “protecting kids” to support this shitty legislation that will harm kids. Blumental doesn't care about protecting anyone, and only wants his name in headlines.

It will make CSAM much much worse.

One of the many reasons this bill is so dangerous: It totally misunderstands how Section 230 works, and in doing so (as with FOSTA) it is likely to make the very real problem of CSAM worse, not better. Section 230 gives companies the flexibility to try different approaches to dealing with various content moderation challenges. It allows for greater and greater experimentation and adjustments as they learn what works – without fear of liability for any “failure.” Removing Section 230 protections does the opposite. It says if you do anything, you may face crippling legal liability. This actually makes companies less willing to do anything that involves trying to seek out, take down, and report CSAM because of the greatly increased liability that comes with admitting that there is CSAM on your platform to search for and deal with. This liability would allow anyone for any reason to sue any platform they want, suing smaller ones out of existence. Look at what is happening right now with book bans across the nation with far right groups. This is going to happen to the internet if this bill passes.

(Remember, the state department released a report in December 2021 recommending that the government crack down on “obscenity” as hard the Reagan Administration did. If this bill passes, it could easily go way beyond shit red states are currently trying. It is a goldmine for the fascist right that is currently in the middle of banning every book that talks about race and sexuality across the US.)

The reason these bills keep showing up is because there is this false lie spread by organizations like NCOSE that platforms do nothing about CSEM online. However, platforms are already liable for child sexual exploitation under federal law. Tech companies sent more than 45 million+ instances of CSAM to the DOJ in 2019 alone, most of which they declined to investigate. This shows that platforms are actually doing everything in their power already to stop CSEM by following already existing laws. The Earn It Act includes zero resources for proven investigation or prevention programs. If Senator Bluementhal actually cared about protecting youth, why wouldn’t he include anything to actually protect them in his shitty horrible bill? EARN IT is actually likely to make prosecuting child molesters more difficult since evidence collected this way likely violates the Fourth Amendment and would be inadmissible in court.

I don’t know why so many Senators are eager to cosponsor the “make child pornography worse” bill, but here we are.

HOW TO FIGHT BACK

EARN IT Act was introduced just two weeks ago and is already being fast-tracked. It will be marked up the week of May 1st and head to the Senate floor immediately after. If there is no loud and consistent opposition, it will be law by JUNE! Most bills never go to markup, so this means they are putting pressure to move this through. There are already 20 co-sponsors, a fifth of the entire Senate. This is an uphill battle and it is very much all hands on deck.

CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES.

This website takes you to your Senator / House members contact info. EMAIL, MESSAGE, SEND LETTERS, CALL CALL CALL CALL CALL. Calling is the BEST way to get a message through. Get your family and friends to send calls too. This is literally the end of free speech online.

(202) 224-3121 connects you to the congressional hotline. Here is a call script if you don't know what to say. Call them every day. Even on the weekends, leaving voicemails are fine.

2. Sign these petitions!

Link to Petition 1

Link to Petition 2

3. SPREAD THE WORD ONLINE

If you have any social media, spread this online. One of the best ways we fought back against this last year was MASSIVE spread online. Tiktok, reddit, twitter, discord, whatever means you have at least mention it. We could see most social media die out by this fall if we don't fight back.

Here is a linktree with more information on this bill including a masterpost of articles, the links to petitions, and the call script.

DISCORD LINK IF YOU WANT TO HELP FIGHT IT

TLDR: The EARN IT Act will lead to online censorship of any and all adult & lgbt content across the entire internet, open the floodgates to mass surveillance the likes which we haven’t seen before, lead to much more CSEM being distributed online, and destroy encryption. Call 202-224-3121 to connect to your house and senate representative and tell them to VOTE NO on this bill that does not protect anyone and harms everyone.

#earn it act #internet censorship #restrict act #us politics #net neutrality

43K notes · View notes

plethoraworldatlas · 5 months

Text

The University of Florida chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (UF SJP) filed a lawsuit today challenging the Chancellor of the State University System of Florida’s order to state universities to deactivate the student group. Contrary to recent media reports, the deactivation order remains in place today.

In response, the lawsuit seeks a preliminary injunction to block the deactivation order from going into effect, arguing that Chancellor Ray Rodrigues and Gov. Ron DeSantis’ decision to effectively punish local student groups for their association with a national group is a clear violation of the constitutional rights to free speech and association.

“As students on a public college campus, we have every right to engage in human rights advocacy and promote public awareness and activism for a just and reasonable solution to the Palestine-Israel conflict” said the University of Florida’s Students for Justice in Palestine. “We know we have First Amendment rights in school and we’re bringing this lawsuit to make sure the government doesn’t silence us or others like us.”

#palestine #gaza #aclu #university of florida #justice for palestine #florida

0 notes

trench · 6 months

Text

School gun report for the week of 10/15/23-10/21/23: AI gun detector edition

10/18/23: Headline: Florida schools to implement new threat management system to help identify concerning behaviors FTA: At the beginning of the new year, Florida schools will stop using a national threat assessment system called the “Comprehensive School Threat Assessment Guidelines” and switch to a new threat-management system known as “The Florida Model.” Nothing fills me more with dread…

View On WordPress

0 notes

lordrakim · 8 months

Text

Asian American advocates slam DeSantis for land law that they say 'will legalize Asian hate'

“People will have a reason — legally they have a law backing them up — to hate,” one critic said. Continue reading Untitled

View On WordPress

#ACLU #asians #china #cuba #fair housing act #florida #hate #NAACP #racism #racists #ron desantis #venezuela

0 notes

dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 2 years

Text

A federal judge has suspended partial enforcement of Florida's "Stop WOKE Act," a bill backed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis that restricts how companies and schools discuss race.

DeSantis signed the bill into law in April. It would limit race-based teachings in schools, and the way that private companies carry out mandatory diversity, equity, and inclusion trainings. Companies that have 15 employees or more could face civil lawsuits if they're accused of violating the law.

In his opinion, Chief US District Judge Mark Walker blocked the employer portion of the law, saying it violated free speech. He compared the law to Netflix's blockbuster science-fiction hit, "Stranger Things."

"In the popular television series Stranger Things, the 'upside down' describes a parallel dimension containing a distorted version of our world," Walker, a nominee of then-President Barack Obama, wrote in his opinion. "Recently, Florida has seemed like a First Amendment upside down."

"Normally, the First Amendment bars the state from burdening speech, while private actors may burden speech freely," Walker continued. "But in Florida, the First Amendment apparently bars private actors from burdening speech, while the state may burden speech freely."

The Governor's press office didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. When DeSantis signed the bill into law he issued a statement likening the trainings and teachings to "indoctrination," saying, "no one should be instructed to feel as if they are not equal or shamed because of their race."

The law targeted what many Republicans call "critical race theory." Formally, critical race theory examines racism in US institutions stemming from slavery and the Jim Crow era. Democrats have argued it's mostly taught in law schools, and defenders of DEI trainings say they're necessary to prevent implicit bias, discrimination, and racism.

The term became more widely used after schools and businesses across the US began openly discussing and addressing topics of systemic racism following the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.

In the wake of the murder, several large corporations issued statements saying they were committed to fighting racism and supporting social justice.

But Republicans have used the term "critical race theory" as a shorthand for race-based discussions and trainings that they say are tied to Marxism.

The Florida law, formally known as House Bill 7, says that schools and businesses can't implement policies or teaching materials saying that members of a specific ethnic group are inherently racist or that they should feel guilty for actions committed by their predecessors. They also are barred from promoting the view that people are privileged or oppressed, or inherently racist or sexist, because of their race or national origin.

Plaintiffs in the case were Honeyfund.com, a Florida honeymoon registry technology company, Ben & Jerry's franchisee Primo Tampa, and workplace diversity consultancy Collective Concepts and its co-founder Chevara Orrin.

The plaintiffs said in their lawsuit that Florida's law infringed on workplace training programs regarding diversity and inclusion, as well as trainings to prevent harassment.

Honeyfund said in its lawsuit that private employers should be able to "engage in open and free exchange of information with employees to identify and begin to address discrimination and harm" at their workplaces.

Shalini Goel Agarwal, counsel at Protect Democracy, one of the legal firms representing the plaintiffs, said in a statement that the law would have chilled "a wide range of speech in the workplace."

"We look forward to proceeding to trial, winning, and seeing this law permanently overturned," Goel Agarwal said. "It is a direct attack on American free speech values as well as on free enterprise in Florida."

Several other organizations including the ACLU, the ACLU of Florida, and the Legal Defense Fund filed suit against Florida's law on Thursday.

DeSantis is up for reelection in November and many believe that he'll run for president in 2024. During his tenure the Governor has embraced controversial culture-war issues, including a law called the Parental Rights in Education Act.

Dubbed by critics as the "Don't Say Gay Bill," the legislation bans discussions about sexual orientation and gender identity in schools, particularly in kindergarten through third grade. Critics say the bill may extend further because it contains ambiguous language banning such instruction "in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate."

14 notes · View notes

benandstevesposts · 1 year

Text

A Far-Right Moms Group Is Terrorizing Schools in the Name of Protecting Kids

Tony was at church one Sunday when his boyfriend’s parents outed him as gay, walking over to his own parents and just blurting it out. They had found Snapchat messages the teenagers exchanged, and in an instant, Tony’s whole world fell apart.

His mother, Carolyn, who was raised in the Southern Baptist Church and was her local church secretary then, was furious at her son. “She kept telling me that I was going to hell and that it was wrong, that I had to change my ways,” Tony, whose last name is being withheld for privacy reasons, told VICE News. Carolyn forced him into counseling sessions with his pastor, who said being gay was evil.

Tony’s mental health spiraled soon after being outed in January 2022. He stopped playing baseball, locked himself away in his bedroom, and eventually started cutting and stabbing himself with pencils. But he found some hope through the Rainbow Youth Project, an LGBTQ advocacy group whom he first contacted a month later, in February.

In late March, Carolyn permitted Tony to start counseling with the group, and Tony felt that there was light at the end of the tunnel. Then, two months later, his mother revoked her permission out of nowhere.

Carolyn tells VICE News she’ll never forget how Tony responded to her ban:

“Mom, you just killed me.”

Later that day, Tony attempted to die by suicide.

Carolyn’s decision didn’t spring out of nowhere: Moms for Liberty, an organization that calls itself a “parental rights group,” had convinced Carolyn that the Rainbow Youth Project was trying to “convince Tony to have his private parts removed and changed.”

Carolyn first contacted Moms for Liberty after she heard about them on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News in February 2022, believing they could help her find a “cure” for her son’s homosexuality, she asked for advice on Twitter.

Over the next couple of months, Carolyn was bombarded with information and directed to posts from the group’s co-founder Tiffany Justice, all of which helped convince her to revoke permission for Tony’s counseling.

Please remember to stop by trying to read the whole story here. This is why it is essential to notice and remain vigilant against terrorist actors creating dangerous locales across the United States. You will want to know if Tony can survive the Moms for Liberty attacks. Will Carolyn get Tony back and be able to escape the clutches of Moms of Liberty without being destroyed? This is what it's like to live in Florida every day, and you will want to experience it here rather than there.

The complete report is found here

0 notes