Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' administration is once again trying to carve out broad new exemptions to the state's celebrated government transparency law. 

This time, lawyers for DeSantis are arguing that call logs from a high-ranking staffer's phone aren't public record, even though the staffer was conducting government business, because it was a private phone.

The Tampa Bay Times first reported Thursday that lawyers for the DeSantis administration argued in court this week before a Leon County judge that the governor's office shouldn't be compelled to turn over call logs from DeSantis' Chief of Staff James Uthmeier's private cellphone.

The Florida Center for Government Accountability sued the DeSantis administration in 2022 for records concerning the migrant flights to Martha's Vineyard that DeSantis organized that year using state resources. The governor's office has turned over many records so far—and disclosed that Uthmeier and other staff used personal email addresses and phones rather than their state-issued ones—but it is currently defying a court order to release Uthmeier's phone logs.

"Florida is no longer the Sunshine State when it comes to transparency," says Michael Barfield, the Center's director of public access. "The public's right to know is headed into darkness."

Public records laws are commonly interpreted at both the federal and state levels, including in Florida, to cover records created on private devices and accounts if they concern government business. For example, the 2023 edition of the Florida attorney general's Government-in-the-Sunshine Manual states that "the mere fact that an e-mail is sent from a private e-mail account using a personal computer is not the determining factor as to whether it is a public record; it is whether the e-mail was prepared or received in connection with official agency business."

The manual also notes that "a public official or employee's use of a private cell phone to conduct public business via text messaging 'can create an electronic written public record subject to disclosure' if the text message is 'prepared, owned, used, or retained…within the scope of his or her employment or agency.'"

But DeSantis' lawyers are arguing that Uthmeier's call logs are "tertiary data," the Tampa Bay Times reports:

"If you hold that these tertiary data points are somehow public records that also have to be captured by a public records custodian, that is a sweeping — sweeping — interpretation of public records," DeSantis lawyer Christopher Lunny told Leon County Circuit Judge Lee Marsh on Tuesday.

But under that argument, Marsh said, all government business could be shielded from the public.

"We ought to just put out word, 'Let's do all of our business on private, bring-your-own cellphones," Marsh said. "Then we don't need public records laws because there'll be no public records, right?"

As Reason described in a magazine feature last year on Florida's Sunshine Law, the DeSantis administration is not just chipping away at the once-powerful public records law; it's taking a sledgehammer to it. State lawmakers have made the governor's travel records secret, and the DeSantis administration has also tried to invoke executive privilege over other documents, a privilege that is found nowhere in Florida's Sunshine Law and has never been claimed by previous governors.

DeSantis' office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The post Ron DeSantis Won't Stop Trying To Gut Florida's Public Records Law appeared first on Reason.com.

On Wednesday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed a bill banning the sale or production of lab-grown meat in the state. While a press release framed the bill as an attempt to advance Floridans' freedom by protecting them from the "World Economic Forum's goal of forcing the world to eat lab-grown meat and insects," all the legislation really does is stile competition for the state's meat producers. 

"Today, Florida is fighting back against the global elite's plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals," DeSantis said in a Wednesday press release. "Our administration will continue to focus on investing in our local farmers and ranchers, and we will save our beef."

Cultivated, or "lab-grown," meat has been available in the United States on an extremely limited basis, generally limited to individual restaurants, since last year, after the Food and Drug Administration approved two different kinds of cultivated chicken for sale.

However, despite DeSantis' supposed fears about a lab-grown meat takeover, the small cultivated meat industry is struggling. The product isn't currently available anywhere in the United States, let alone in Florida.

Nonetheless, the governor signed Senate Bill 1084, which enacts a wide-ranging ban on cultivated meat, making it illegal "for any person to manufacture for sale, sell, hold or offer for sale, or distribute cultivated meat in" Florida. Violators of the law face misdemeanor penalties, and businesses caught selling the product could have their licenses suspended.

"We must protect our incredible farmers and the integrity of American agriculture," Florida Commissioner of Agriculture Wilton Simpson said in the press release. "Lab-grown meat is a disgraceful attempt to undermine our proud traditions and prosperity, and is in direct opposition to authentic agriculture."

However, it seems DeSantis is the real authoritarian in this situation. Instead of letting Floridians decide for themselves whether they want to try lab-grown meat, DeSantis is having the state step in, all in the name of protecting Floridians from an imaginary threat to their freedom.

Florida's lab-grown meat ban is a perfect marriage of protectionism and the culture war. By framing the tiny lab-grown meat industry as a left-wing threat, DeSantis can justify giving government kickbacks to the meat industry, all while protecting meat producers from a source of future competition. Wednesday's press release goes so far as to brag about a litany of recently passed legislation that "support[s] the state's agriculture and meat industry."

Unfortunately, Florida isn't the first state to ban cultivated meat. Alabama passed a ban on lab-grown meat last month, and legislation to ban the product is pending in Arizona and Tennessee. Italy banned it last year.

The post DeSantis Signs Bill Banning Lab-Grown Meat in Florida appeared first on Reason.com.

There may not be a more apt visual metaphor for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' past few years than his opposition to a proposed marijuana legalization ballot initiative—which he announced Tuesday while literally standing behind a sign celebrating "Freedom Month."

"I don't want this state to be reeking of marijuana," DeSantis said, defaulting to one of the laziest arguments against pot freedom, but one that DeSantis has been using for years. "We're doing fine. We don't need to do that."

How's that for Freedom Month?

In fairness to DeSantis, the jarringly dissonant signage was celebrating the state's sales tax holiday during May. Even so, the gap between DeSantis' pro-freedom messaging and his actions as governor has become a recurring theme for the one-time presidential hopeful.

After all, this is the same guy who wrote a book titled The Courage To Be Free, but has made a name for himself in conservative politics by wielding state power against drag queens, student groups, and others who have had the courage to freely express their opinions. On the presidential campaign trail, DeSantis would talk up the importance of school choice and parental rights, then moments later promise stricter state control over school curriculums. He's championed Florida's status as a refuge for Americans fleeing poor government policies in other states, even as he's tried to boot out migrants who are voting with their feet by coming to America for the same reason.

Freedom, for DeSantis, seems to mean that you can do whatever you'd please—but only if he approves.

It's disappointing, but hardly surprising, that DeSantis is applying that same logic to marijuana legalization. Florida residents might get a chance to vote on legalizing recreational weed in November, but DeSantis promised Tuesday that he would be "getting involved in different ways" to combat that ballot initiative. It's unclear exactly what DeSantis means, but State Attorney General Ashley Moody and some anti-legalization groups have already sued in state court to block the initiative from getting on the ballot.

The ballot initiative, Florida Amendment 3, would change the state's constitution to allow adults aged 21 and older to possess up to three ounces of marijuana. Existing licensed medical marijuana distribution centers—Florida voters approved medical marijuana in 2016—would be the only places allowed to distribute recreational weed, although state lawmakers could pass new laws to allow for commercial distribution and home growing.

As Marijuana Moment notes, economic analyses of the ballot initiative show that legalization would be a boon for Florida and could generate between $195.6 million and $431.3 million in new sales tax revenue annually.

Greater freedom for Floridians and higher tax revenue seem to matter less to DeSantis than the possibility that some of the state's residents might dislike the smell of reefer. "You want to walk down the street here and smell it," he asked, rhetorically, on Tuesday. "Do you want to not be able to take your family out to dinner because you're worried about it?"

If that's the best argument that the opponents of legalization in Florida can muster, there might be little cause for concern. Even so, having the (admittedly quite popular) governor campaigning against legalization figures to be a factor in the election.

Voters seem to be split on the legalization issue: A poll taken last month by USA Today and Ipsos showed 49 percent of Floridians support the ballot initiative—including 38 percent of registered Republicans. That's well short of the 60 percent threshold required for the amendment to pass.

What DeSantis does as Florida's governor will continue to carry national implications, not solely because he remains one of the most well-known Republican politicians in the country. He's reportedly seeking to patch up his relationship with former President Donald Trump—the two had dinner this week, according to The Washington Post—and may have a role to play in a future Trump administration, or as a Republican presidential candidate in 2028.

By then, maybe he'll have gotten over his fear of the smell of weed.

The post DeSantis Frets About Florida 'Reeking of Marijuana,' Says He'll Oppose Legalization appeared first on Reason.com.