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Commentary: Support lawmakers reforming Florida’s broken public records law

By: Bobby Block 
First Amendment Foundation

For the first time in many years, there is a real glimmer of hope for government transparency in Florida. After watching the state’s once nation-leading public records system buckle under political pressure, special interests, stonewalling and outright abuse, a bipartisan group of lawmakers has finally had enough.

State Sen. Darryl Rouson, D-St. Petersburg, and state Rep. Alex Andrade, R-Pensacola, have introduced legislation — SB 770 and HB 437 — in this year’s legislative session that would put real teeth back into the laws protecting every Floridian’s constitutional right to know what their government is doing.

Bobby Block is executive director of the First Amendment Foundation. (courtesy, Bobby Block)

This reform effort did not emerge from academic theory or ceremonial Sunshine Week rhetoric. It grew out of lived experience — and a dawning realization that secrecy has become the default operating principle of state government.

No one understands this better than Andrade. Last year, he led House efforts to investigate the Hope Florida scandal, after the public learned that $10 million in Medicaid settlement funds — money intended for health care — had been routed through a nonprofit linked to the governor and ultimately used to support political activity opposing a citizen-led marijuana amendment. When Andrade sought basic records needed by his legislative subcommitee to do its job, requests went unanswered, deadlines passed and explanations disappeared. If a sitting legislator can’t obtain public records from the governor’s office, what chance does an ordinary Floridian have?

That experience is hardly unique. Every day, Floridians seeking information about school policies, zoning decisions, police incidents, tax levies or government contracts encounter silence or are quoted exorbitant “research and processing fees” just to access documents the public already owns. Delay has become policy. Indifference has become procedure.

Recent events show just how far enforcement has collapsed. In November 2025, the Joint Legislative Auditing Committee approved a report certifying that Florida was complying with its Transparency Florida Act — even though investigative reporting had already shown that billions of dollars in state contracts, including for the hastily devised immigrant detention facility in the Everglades known as “Alligator Alcatraz,” had never been posted to the public website where the law requires them to appear. The committee approved the report in under a minute, without discussion, rubber-stamping false compliance and rendering our transparency laws meaningless.

That same enforcement vacuum enabled an even more troubling revelation weeks later. Investigations by Seeking Rents, the Miami Herald, and the Tampa Bay Times found that at least $36 million in taxpayer funds — money originally earmarked for children’s services, health care and opioid recovery — had been diverted to advertising, consultants and legal services aimed at defeating two citizen-led constitutional amendments: one on marijuana, the other on abortion rights.

Florida law clearly prohibits using public resources to influence elections. But that prohibition only works if the public can see how money moved, who authorized it, and for what purpose. In this case, access to those records was delayed, fragmented and obscured — ensuring voters could not fully understand what was happening until long after ballots were cast.

The erosion of transparency is not limited to billion-dollar scandals. When the Orlando Sentinel sought records from the Florida Department of Transportation explaining the decision to paint over the rainbow-colored crosswalk near the Pulse nightclub — a community memorial to the victims of the 2016 mass shooting at the nightclub — the paper was unable to obtain a single document supporting FDOT’s public claim that the artwork posed a traffic hazard. No studies. No memos. No emails.

Taken together, these episodes reveal a system where public records laws exist largely without enforcement or accountability. Florida now has more than 1,200 statutory exemptions to public records access, and that number grows every year. Increasingly, agencies don’t even bother citing exemptions. They simply ignore requests, knowing there are no consequences for doing so.

That is why the reforms proposed by Rouson and Andrade matter so much. Their legislation would require agencies to acknowledge records requests within three business days, prohibit agencies from charging fees when they fail to respond on time, and — most importantly — impose penalties on officials who ignore or obstruct lawful requests. Accountability without consequences is not accountability at all.

This legislation, shaped with input from the First Amendment Foundation and research from the Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Project and the Florida Center for Government Accountability, represents the strongest effort in years to restore Florida’s transparency framework. And it comes at a pivotal moment. A 2024 study cited by the Brechner Center ranked Florida 31st nationally in public records compliance and 49th in the fees charged to requesters — a stunning fall for the state that once defined open-records laws.

Decline, however, is not destiny. Floridians still have a choice. If we want a government that works for the people rather than above them, we must demand better. Call your lawmakers. Tell them you support HB 437 and SB 770. Insist on a government that doesn’t hide how it spends your money or wields your authority.

[Click Here for Article Link]
 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

First Amendment Foundation Statement on United States v. Burke

The First Amendment Foundation – Florida applauds the federal court’s decision in United States v. Burke to dismiss wiretap charges that were never grounded in law. This ruling is a significant victory for free expression and press freedom, and it will help restore confidence that journalists, researchers, and members of the public are not breaking federal law simply by accessing or reviewing streaming information. 

For more than 40 years, our Foundation has defended the principle that government cannot use vague or untested theories to punish lawful newsgathering. The court’s rejection of the government’s approach here affirms that openness and access to information are cornerstones of both the First Amendment and a healthy democracy.

Key takeaways from the ruling:

  • Government overreach rejected. The court found that the government’s wiretap theory was not supported in law, sending a clear message that prosecutors cannot stretch statutes to intimidate or silence those engaged in lawful information gathering.
  • Streaming access is not a crime. The decision reassures journalists, watchdogs, and the public that reviewing streaming content does not violate federal law; a critical point in an era when so much information is shared online.
  • First Amendment values are protected. The dismissal upholds the principle that the press and public must be free to access, analyze, and report on information without fear of baseless criminal prosecution.

The First Amendment Foundation was proud to support Tim Burke in this case because the stakes extended far beyond one journalist. The government’s expansive theory, if accepted, could have chilled investigative reporting and undermined public confidence in the safety of newsgathering itself.

Today’s decision is a victory not only for Tim Burke, but for every citizen who believes in transparency, accountability, and the right to know.

Click here to review the court order.

Bobby Block

Executive Director

First Amendment Foundation – Florida
 

Charlie Kirk’s assassination: A threat to free expression | Opinion

By Bobby Block
September 12, 2025 9:30 AM

The brutal assassination of Charlie Kirk is more than just a crime against one man; it is a strike at the very heart of American democracy.

As people consider the life and untimely death of Kirk, it becomes essential to examine where they sit within the ongoing debate about free speech — its protections, its boundaries and the way society responds to words it does not like. His murder represents the ultimate form of censorship, one that undermines not only his voice but the principle of open expression on which this country is built.

Kirk was a polarizing figure. Many people admired his blunt, passionate style and believed he gave voice to ideas they felt had been ignored. Others despised his rhetoric and called it dangerous or hateful. That division is not unique to Kirk; it is the very landscape of public debate in a free society. The First Amendment was designed to protect unpopular speech precisely because it is always easiest to defend voices with which we agree. Protecting speech means protecting everyone. But in the aftermath of Kirk’s assassination, the fault lines of our national conversation have deepened. His supporters blame his critics, pointing to the harsh denunciations and verbal attacks he endured. His critics, in turn, insist that his conservative ideas and confrontational style sparked violence against him. This mutual recrimination misses the essential point: the First Amendment is not the problem. The problem is how we, as a society, choose to react to the kinds of speech we love and hate. If Kirk’s words outraged, the answer was to rebut them with reason, humor, protest or the countless other forms of speech available to us in a free society.

Violence, however, is never an acceptable answer. It is the ultimate cancellation, the final silencing that forecloses debate entirely. To condone it — or even to excuse it as an understandable reaction — is to surrender the central principle that sustains our democracy.

Over the last decade, America has drifted toward a dangerous intolerance of dissenting voices. On both the left and the right, there has been a growing impulse to cancel or silence those who say things we find uncomfortable or offensive.

Social media has amplified this trend, rewarding outrage and reducing complex debates to soundbites and insults. Kirk’s murder should be a wake-up call. We cannot afford to let violence become an acceptable response to speech, no matter how much we dislike what is being said.

Instead, we need to reclaim the lost art of resilience in public debate and recognize that our opponents in debate are still human beings.

We must reject the temptation to meet offense with fury, criticism with threats and words with weapons. Instead, we should embrace the nobler task: answering speech with more speech, guided by the better angels of our nature.

Kirk’s life and death tell us something profoundly American. He spoke his mind without fear, and in so doing, he exercised a right that belongs to every citizen. That right is fragile, because it depends on the willingness of all of us to uphold it in practice.

If we allow violence to dictate who may speak and who must remain silent, we will have abandoned not just the First Amendment but the democratic experiment it supports.

As the head of the First Amendment Foundation in Florida, I know how we fight for these goals every day and believe in them with all of our hearts. We believe the best way to honor Charlie Kirk is by recommitting ourselves to the principle that allowed him — and allows us — to speak in the first place. Free expression is not easy, but it is the foundation of a society where disagreements can be aired, arguments can be won or lost and no one need fear for their life because of the words they utter. That is the promise we must keep alive.

[Click to see the full article]
 

Press-Freedom Groups File Brief in Defense of Reporter Timothy Burke’s Right to Gather Newsworthy Content Online

Carlson and Burke

Burke had gained access to and reported on an antisemitic rant by Ye that occurred during the taping of Tucker Carlson’s since-canceled Fox News program

WASHINGTON — On Friday, a coalition of free-speech groups filed an amicus brief in United States v. Burke, a federal criminal prosecution that seeks to convict reporter Timothy Burke for publishing unaired footage from the former Fox News talk show Tucker Carlson Tonight.

The brief was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida by the American Civil Liberties Union, American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Florida First Amendment Foundation, Free Press, Freedom of the Press Foundation, and Jane Bambauer, professor of law and director of the Marion B. Brechner First Amendment Project at the University of Florida.

Prosecutors are using the Wiretap Act, which prohibits “intercepting” “electronic communications,” in an attempt to convict Burke for finding and publicizing footage of, among other things, an antisemitic rant by Ye — formerly known as Kanye West — during a taping of Tucker Carlson’s since-cancelled Fox News show. Prosecutors claim that Burke’s actions involved the intentional interception of electronic communications and thereby violated the Act, statutory exceptions that include conditions where the “electronic communication is readily accessible to the general public.”

The Court asked whether the text of the Wiretap Act criminalizes accessing generally accessible livestreams, and whether the First Amendment would allow such a reading. The issue is whether exceptions written into the Act must be proved as elements of the offense by the government, or an affirmative defense by the defendant.

Prosecutors claim that they’re entitled to bring Burke to trial regardless of whether the communications were accessible to the general public; instead, they say, Burke needs to prove as part of his defense that the communications were accessible. The amici argue that this would allow future government charges against journalists exercising their constitutional rights — or even charges against everyday people using the internet. 

[See full article here]
 

Commentary: First Amendment protects all speech, not just what’s popular

By Bob Shaw

A few months ago, the First Amendment Foundation agreed to partner with the University of Florida Levin College of Law to help launch a First Amendment Law Laboratory—designed to expose students to the real-world complexities of free expression and the right to know.

Now, the UF law school finds itself at the center of a national controversy over one student’s body of work and the offensive views he has expressed. Preston Damsky’s academic paper argues that the Constitution’s opening phrase “We the People” was intended only for whites, and he has advocated for the expulsion of nonwhite citizens. More recently, comments on his personal social media feed included a remark about the need to “abolish” Jews “by any means necessary.”

Public outrage is understandable. These views are odious and the antithesis of what America stands for. But here’s the hard truth: the First Amendment protects vile, hateful speech, not just popular opinions. That is the burden — and the genius — of a free society.

Even before the U.S. Supreme Court wrote in its landmark New York Times v. Sullivan (1964) that public debate must be “uninhibited, robust and wide-open,” Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes noted that perhaps the most important idea in the Constitution “is the principle of free thought — not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.”

The fact that Damsky’s views are widely held to be loathsome does not negate his right to express them, even in a publicly-funded law school. Damsky’s papers — another called for the expulsion of immigrants — have received awards. It’s not likely his professors, who have remained silent, agreed with his conclusions. But they were clearly impressed by his scholarship and writing skills, which are the principal criteria for grading academic papers.
That doesn’t mean his speech is free from consequences. Damsky has reportedly lost a legal internship over his public comments. Bar examiners, potential employers, and civic organizations may — and likely will — make their own judgments and express their own First Amendment rights when it comes to hiring him or even allowing him to practice law. That is how a marketplace of ideas functions in a democracy.

The more serious concern lies in his call on social media to eliminate Jews “by any means necessary.” Here, First Amendment protection hinges on context. Courts distinguish between expressing even hateful ideas and inciting violence. A disturbing opinion stated on social media is different from saying the same thing to a mob. The university should investigate whether Damsky’s comments crossed that legal line, particularly whether his posts violate federal Title VI protections against a “hostile environment” for minority groups, including Jews.

And that is exactly what it is doing. The university’s investigation is scheduled to conclude in July. Meantime, Damsky has been suspended.

But before calling for his expulsion, we must consider a broader principle. Just a few weeks ago, many people criticized ICE and the Trump Administration for forcibly detaining and revoking the visa of a foreign student whose only “crime” was to co-author an op-ed about Palestinian rights in her college newspaper. The logic behind both reactions — one from the right, one from the left — is uncomfortably similar: punish speech we disagree with.

If we allow public universities to expel students based on offensive but legally protected views, we erode the very foundation of academic freedom and constitutional liberty that protects the speech of all of us. Yes, Damsky’s rhetoric is ugly. But the First Amendment was designed precisely to protect such speech — so the public, fully informed, can judge it for what it is.

Free speech is not without cost. Say what you believe, and the world will know who you are. That is both the beauty and the burden of the First Amendment.

Bob Shaw is the chairman of the First Amendment Foundation
 
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