Representatives have advanced to the floor legislation that sponsors say will plug loopholes that allow pornography in schools. Critics, meanwhile, believe the bill will expand book bans.

The House Education & Employment Committee approved a bill (HB 1539) that would revise a law on challenging books that are “harmful to minors” regardless of whether they hold literary value.

That could challenge the application of the Miller Test, a free speech standard rooted in a 1973 Supreme Court ruling. A landmark decision written by former Chief Justice Warren Burger allowed for censorship of obscene materials that violate community standards, but includes in any evaluation whether a work as a whole contains “literary, artistic, political or scientific value.”

Rep. Doug Bankson, an Apopka Republican, said that framework has allowed some books with inappropriate content to remain on bookshelves even as Florida has tried to remove pornographic works from schools.

“We’re not talking about something that has classical, historic, literary value,” Bankson said. “We’re talking about if within that there is something we have all agreed that is truly poisonous to the minds of our children.”

But Democrats on the committee said the legislation would advance an already embarrassing policy of book banning in Florida’s schools. PEN America already reports that Florida leads the nation in yanking books off school shelves, accounting for 73% of all book banning incidents in the country in the second half of 2023.

“We should not be creating law upon law upon law that does demoralize our educators,” said Rep. Kelly Skidmore, a Boca Raton Democrat. “That does make it difficult for them to make any decision about how to teach a child a difficult subject. Should 10-year-olds be reading what my mom would have called smut? No, and no teacher and no librarian is pushing that on them.”

Some activists speaking at the meeting disagreed. Julie Gebhards, a Tampa mother who has spoken against certain books at local schools, brought a copy of “Identical,” a young adult novel by Ellen Hopkins. Gebhards’ copy was brimming with stickered notes to mark pages with sexually explicit passages. She then showed a copy of “Blankets,” a celebrated graphic novel that includes nudity and a sex scene.

Critics say the legislation sends Florida further down the road of censoring material in schools and restricting access to important work with different political views about sexual orientation and gender identity.

Quinn Diaz of Equality Florida said the legislation would create a “dangerous erosion of constitutional standards that could drastically increase book bannings in Florida’s classrooms.” Diaz said Florida had banned 4,500 books last year alone, and suggested that the state does not need more material taken away.

“This bill seeks to address a topic that is exhaustively covered by state law, but in doing so, would reject a long-standing Supreme Court standard to prohibit consideration of a material’s serious literary and scientific value, lowering the threshold for obscenity determinations,” Diaz said.

But GOP lawmakers said the problem was not how many books were banned, but that the need was there at all. Rep. Taylor Yarkosky characterized the battle against pornography as one for the next generation’s very souls.

“This is pure evil, in my opinion,” Yarkosky said of the books in question.

“And they get up there and say all these comments and all these explanations. Well, they’re distortions and distractions from what is really going on. The Bible says in First Corinthians that God is not the author of confusion, but of peace. And nothing that they’re saying is peaceful or clarity. It is confusing calamity, chaos and discontentment to the 10th power, which, by biblical definition, is evil.”

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A controversial “weather modification” bill underwent intense pushback by members of the House State Affairs Committee, but lawmakers still approved it in the end.

The “Weather Modification Activities” bill, if approved by the full Legislature, “prohibits certain acts intended to affect temperature, weather, or intensity of sunlight within the atmosphere of this state.” The bill (HB 477) is now going to the floor of the chamber for full consideration.

But Thursday’s hearing before the State Affairs Committee drew heavy criticism from lawmakers ahead of a stark 15-9 split vote to advance it.

State Affairs Committee members such as Rep. Dotie Joseph, a North Miami Democrat, admitted that she was leaning in favor of the bill but changed her mind after testimony.

“We want to encourage good businesses who operate with good practices,” Joseph said. She said there were no clear definitions in the bill about how such a measure would be enforced at airports, who would inspect aircraft, how much it would cost the state and who would oversee enforcement at the facilities.

The proposed legislation stems at least in part from the chemtrails conspiracy theory. It’s a decades-old, debunked belief that contrails, the white lines of condensed water vapor that jets leave behind in the sky, are actually toxic chemicals that the government and other entities are using to do everything from altering the weather to sterilizing and mind-controlling the populace.

Rep. Kevin Steele, a Tallahassee Republican, sponsored the bill and told committee members that he understands there is skepticism. He was a nonbeliever as well, initially. But at very minimum, he said, there is cloud seeding going on and it involves airplanes spraying metals into the atmosphere.

“It is real. It is happening,” Steele said.

Steele acknowledged that there are needed clarifications ahead. “We are going to adjust,” he said.

The preliminary review process in the past two months has drawn wild testimony in various committees in both the House and Senate, which has a parallel bill (SB 56) sponsored by Republican Sen. Ileana Garcia. That measure was approved on the floor of the full Senate in a 28-9 vote.

Bradford Thomas, a recently retired Judge for the Florida 1st District Court of Appeal and former prosecutor, is one of the most vocal advocates of the chemtrails conspiracy. He has spoken before several legislative committees and did so again Thursday. Thomas reiterated his belief that there is untoward spraying of chemicals in the skies above his home in St. Johns County.

“I’ve seen it with my own eyes. It’s occurring,” Thomas said. “I’ve seen this at least 15 times.”

Augustus Doricko, founder of Rainmaker, a cloud-seeding geoengineering startup company, testified before the subcommittee that there is indeed cloud seeding going on. But he said it’s already heavily regulated and the proposed measure before the Legislature isn’t really necessary.

He said the conspiracy theories are “baseless and unsubstantiated claims about streaky clouds in the sky,” adding the exhaust from cars driving 200 miles release more metals into the atmosphere than any cloud seeding projects.

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You may or may not like James Uthmeier’s efforts to fight the mass availability of marijuana in Florida, but his actions were certainly not illegal.

Uthmeier, now the Attorney General of Florida, was at the forefront of the Gov. Ron DeSantis administration’s fight against Amendment 3, which sought to constitutionally legalize marijuana for “recreational” use.

The Governor’s team was never quiet about what they were fighting, and they were creative along the way — believing that their fight was about protecting our Constitution and the Florida way of life.

From running public service announcements about the harms of marijuana to drivers, pregnant women, and children to the large number of events hosted by DeSantis, the administration was all in with its efforts to educate the public on the full scope of Amendment 3 — which would have created a functional monopoly and allowed marijuana smoking in public places — even around kids.

Amendment 3 failed. Then came the aftermath.

Some who supported Amendment 3 or appear to be supportive of the very corporation that funded Amendment 3 started looking for ways to exact revenge.

Their targets? The Hope Florida Foundation and Uthmeier, who served as DeSantis’ Chief of Staff during the Amendment 3 fight.

Here’s the timeline I’ve pieced together from media reports and hearings held in the Florida House of Representatives.

As part of a pre-suit settlement with Medicaid provider Centene, the state received $57 million, and the Hope Florida Foundation, a non-profit direct support organization that provides grants to outside entities supporting the administration’s priorities, received a $10 million donation.

These types of settlements are common.

And from all the facts I have seen, Uthmeier had nothing to do with the Foundation getting funds through the settlement.

Not long after the Centene settlement, the Foundation provided grants to two 501(c)(4) organizations for charitable purposes that obviously align with Hope Florida’s mission to promote healthy families and children and support their journey to self-sufficiency.

One group works to keep drugs away from kids, an obvious fit.

The other had already done considerable work to bring the Florida business community into partnership with the Hope Florida program.

Both organizations had previously contributed large sums to the fight against Amendment 4.

According to its Chair, Uthmeier wasn’t on the Foundation Board, didn’t talk to it, and couldn’t direct it to do anything. He wasn’t on the Board of either 501(c)(4) grantee, and he couldn’t “direct” either to submit grant applications or do anything else.

Of course, Uthmeier would have been familiar with both entities because both had contributed to the fight against marijuana use in public spaces. It is also likely that Uthmeier would have regularly communicated with both entities about the Governor’s efforts to defeat Amendment 3.

As substantial investors in the fight, they would have wanted campaign updates.

In fact, both organizations continued donating to the “no on 3” issue committee chaired by Uthmeier (I’ll note that the media has failed to note the important legal distinctions between an issue committee and a candidate committee).

Uthmeier did not direct or ask for those donations. But I am sure that Uthmeier and all those opposed to Amendment 3 were very glad those donations were made.

The Amendment 3 initiative was a “dog fight” to the end and will go down in history as the most expensive ballot amendment campaign in American history.

After successfully defeating Amendment 3 in November, the “no on 3” committee dissolved and distributed its remaining assets.

For his efforts, some politicians are now attacking Uthmeier as a “criminal” — claiming that he “committed federal crimes.”  These hyperbolic attacks are just not true.

From everything I’ve seen, nothing about Uthmeier’s actions or conduct during the Amendment 3 fight was illegal, or even scandalous. The Centene settlement had a common non-profit component. Hope Florida’s Board made its own decisions about awarding grants. And the grantees also had their own boards and rules that governed their decisions.

Even if (and I haven’t seen real facts to back this up) Uthmeier asked for additional support from two prior donors to the “no on 3″ effort, he had a First Amendment right to ask. And the “no on 3” committee that Uthmeier chaired timely (and publicly) reported the donations from these entities, as required by Florida law.

I have witnessed decades of Florida political maneuvering — and in this case see only smoke—no fire.

For all the posturing, theatrics and rhetoric from those who oppose the position taken by Attorney General Uthmeier on Amendment 3, there is no scandal here — just politicians who appear set on exacting revenge on behalf of a mega-marijuana company that put $150 million into a fight to get special treatment for itself, and a few other privileged companies enshrined into the Florida constitution.

You may not like the stand that Uthmeier took, but none of it was illegal.

For my part, I hope that when future ballot measures are pushed by large corporate interests seeking to profit from them, there are patriots like Attorney General Uthmeier who are willing to step up to make sure that Floridian’s are fully apprised of the measures that they are about to vote on — which is necessary if we are to protect our Florida Constitution.

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Alan Lawson is a retired Justice of the Florida Supreme Court and a founding shareholder of Lawson Huck Gonzalez PLLC.

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