Florida bill would require bloggers who write about the governor to register with the state

Enlarge / Florida Governor Ron DeSantis during a press conference in Daytona Beach Shores on 18 January 2023. Getty Images | SOPA Images

A bill in Florida would require bloggers who write about Governor Ron DeSantis and other elected officials to register with a state office and file monthly reports or risk being fined fines of $25 per day. The bill was introduced in the Florida Senate on Tuesday by Senator Jason Brodeur, a Republican.

If signed into law, the proposed law will likely be challenged in court on the grounds that it violates First Amendment protections for free speech and the press. Defending his bill, Brodeur said, “Paid bloggers are lobbyists who write instead of speak. according to the Florida Politics news site.

The text of the bill defines bloggers as people who write for websites or web pages that are "frequently updated with opinion, commentary, or commercial content." Websites run by newspapers or "similar publications" are excluded from the definition.

The proposed registration requirements apply to bloggers who receive compensation for articles about elected state officials, including "the governor, lieutenant governor, member of the Cabinet, or any member of the Legislative Assembly". Bloggers writing about a member of the legislature should register with the state's Office of Legislative Services, while bloggers writing about the governor or other members of the executive branch should register with the Ethics Commission.

"If a blogger posts to a blog about an elected official and receives, or will receive, compensation for that post, the blogger must register with the appropriate office...within 5 days of the first blogger's post that mentions an elected state officer," the bill reads. "Upon registration with the appropriate office, a blogger must file monthly reports on the 10th day following the end of each calendar month from the time where a blog post is added to the blog."

'Hard to imagine' a greater violation of the First Amendment

Reports should name "the person or entity who compensated the blogger for the blog post" and specify the "amount of compensation received". There would be fines "of $25 per day per report for each day late, not to exceed $2,500 per report." The blogger requirements would use the "same procedure by which lobbyists are notified of failure to file a timely report and the amount of fines imposed".

"It's hard to imagine a proposal that would more violate the First Amendment," New York-based civil rights attorney Ron Kuby said, according to an NBC News report. "We do not register journalists. People who write cannot be forced to register."

Scott Wilkens, senior counsel at Columbia University's Knight First Amendment Institute, told Ars that "the bill raises serious concerns about freedom of expression online. It seems very difficult to establish a significant distinction between paid bloggers who write about the Florida executive or legislative branches and journalists who do the same.The bill regulates speech on matters of public interest, issues that are central to the First Amendment ."

We also received a statement from Bruce Brown, Executive Director of the Journalists Committee for Freedom of the Press. "When a bill this clearly unconstitutional is introduced, it's critical that reporters explain to the public why it violates the First Amendment," Brown said. “Our system of free speech rejected the British tradition of licensing printers because we recognized that it was the essence of autonomy to have complete freedom to criticize public officials who act in our name. The registration regime proposed here would impede that and deny Floridians the right to hear diverse voices about the conduct of their elected officials...