Preliminary Injunction Blocking Florida Anti-Protest Law Remains in Effect as Federal Appeals Court Seeks Guidance From Florida Supreme Court
January 10, 2023
Appeal will be heard before the Florida Supreme Court following oral arguments at the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - January 10, 2023
CONTACT: LDF: media@naacpldf.org, ACLU of Florida Media Office: media@aclufl.org,
CJP: nadege@communityjusticeproject.com
MIAMI, FL - Today, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals left in place an injunction against Florida’s anti-protest law, otherwise known as H.B. 1, while inviting the Florida Supreme Court to express its views on the law’s proper interpretation.
A federal trial court had previously issued a preliminary injunction blocking Governor DeSantis and certain local officials from enforcing key provisions of the anti-protest law. This injunction was appealed by Governor DeSantis and former Duval County Sheriff Mike Williams. While today’s decision seeks assistance from the Florida Supreme Court in interpreting the law’s scope, the injunction remains in place while the Florida Supreme Court takes up the question.
“This means that I can continue to exercise my Constitutional right to protest and not worry about being arrested under the unfair provisions of H.B. 1,” said Ben Frazier, founder of plaintiff organization the Northside Coalition of Jacksonville. “This is a step in the right direction.”
The law, enacted in April 2021, was passed in response to national protests against police violence and targets Black organizations and protesters demanding racial justice. In May 2021, The Dream Defenders, The Black Collective, Chainless Change, Black Lives Matter Alliance of Broward, the Florida State Conference of the NAACP, and the Northside Coalition of Jacksonville filed a lawsuit alleging that the anti-protest legislation violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution by chilling protected speech and criminalizing protest activity in an effort to suppress the voices of Black-led organizations. The Eleventh Circuit’s order validates the concerns expressed by Judge Mark Walker of the Northern District of Florida, who previously deemed the legislation’s broad definition of rioting to arguably criminalize expressive activity protected by the U.S. Constitution. The Eleventh Circuit also unanimously agreed, over the Governor’s objection, that the Governor is a proper party in the lawsuit and that the plaintiff organizations were entitled to sue him.
Plaintiffs will next make their case to the Florida Supreme Court. They are represented by the Legal Defense Fund, (LDF), American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida, Community Justice Project (CJP), and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP.
“The Eleventh Circuit recognized the capacity of this anti-protest law to be read broadly and endanger the liberty of peaceful protesters,” the civil rights groups jointly stated. “Florida’s anti-protest legislation is an attempt to censor and intimidate Black organizations and others who are demanding justice, calling out police misconduct, and seeking to protect their communities. We look forward to engaging with the Florida Supreme Court in this matter and continuing to protect the rights of Black organizers and organizations across the state.”
Read the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision here.
Federal Judge Blocks Key Portion of Florida’s Anti-Protest Law
September 9, 2021
TALLAHASSEE, FL — Today, in a major victory for civil rights and racial justice advocates, a federal judge granted a request made as part of an ongoing lawsuit filed by civil rights groups to preliminarily enjoin enforcement of a key provision of H.B.1, Florida’s anti-protest law. The enjoined provision re-defines the crime of “riot” and imposes harsh penalties for those arrested under the law. Prior to the injunction, Black-led organizations who organize for racial justice in Florida, were chilled from exercising their First Amendment right to protest out of fear that the law allowed them to be swept up and arrested while peacefully protesting.
On May 11, 2021, LDF, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida, and the Community Justice Project (CJP), with Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP serving as counsel, filed a lawsuit challenging H.B.1 arguing that it violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution by chilling protected speech and criminalizing protest activity— and subsequently filed a motion for preliminary injunction in July 2021. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of several Black-led organizations: The Dream Defenders, The Black Collective, Chainless Change, Black Lives Matter Alliance of Broward, the Florida State Conference of the NAACP, and the Northside Coalition of Jacksonville. In response to the judge’s decision today, the coalition released the following joint statement:
“Today’s decision enjoining enforcement of a key provision of H.B.1 will greatly contribute to the safety of Black organizers and others affected by this heinous law. H.B.1 effectively criminalizes our constitutional right to peacefully protest and puts anyone – particularly people of color demonstrating against police violence – at risk of unlawful arrest, injury, and even death. This overt targeting of protesters and is shameful and directly contradicts our Constitution. We are glad the court has agreed to suspend enforcement of this key provision while we continue to advocate to ensure that protesters in Florida can safely exercise their right to speak out against injustice.”
H.B.1 was passed as a direct response to racial justice protests in 2020 and appears designed to target those who protest police violence. Among other concerning provisions, the law risks criminalizing peaceful protest, shields those who injure or kill protestors (for example, by ramming their vehicles into protestors) from civil penalties, discourages people from protesting, and otherwise infringes on First Amendment rights.
Read Judge Walker’s decision enjoining enforcement of H.B.1 here.
Civil Rights Groups File Federal Lawsuit Challenging Florida’s Anti-Protest Law
May 11, 2021
TALLAHASSEE — Black-led organizations The Black Collective, Black Lives Matter Alliance Broward, Chainless Change, Dream Defenders, the Florida State Conference of the NAACP, and the Northside Coalition of Jacksonville filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida challenging a recently enacted state law (H.B. 1) designed to chill Floridians’ First Amendment right to free speech and peaceful assembly in the wake of last summer’s demonstrations against police violence. The law targets Black protestors and their allies who demand racial justice and has already slowed protest activity among Black organizers in Florida. The law was passed in direct response to national protests – the vast majority of which were non-violent – demanding justice for the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and a reimagining of public safety.
Among other things, the law creates new criminal penalties for protestors, intensifies criminal and civil penalties for various protest activities, and allows Governor DeSantis to override a municipality’s decision to reduce the operating budget of its police department if the budget is appealed by a State Attorney, county, or city commissioner.
The lawsuit was filed by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), ACLU of Florida, and Community Justice Project. The law firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP is serving as counsel with the civil rights groups. The lawsuit argues that H.B. 1 violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution by chilling protected speech and criminalizing protest activity.
In addition to the above measures, the law also provides special protection to monuments, memorials, and “historic” objects and allows vigilantes and counter-protesters to escape civil liability for killing or injuring a protester with their car or by any other means. By emboldening white supremacist vigilantes, H.B. 1 increases violence against protesters and thus make protests more dangerous to the public. In its entirety, H.B. 1 criminalizes demonstrations, especially those calling for police accountability in Black communities.
CIVIL RIGHTS GROUPS FILE Motion for preliminary injunction
July 14, 2021
On behalf of Black-led organizations: The Dream Defenders, The Black Collective, Chainless Change, Black Lives Matter Alliance of Broward, the Florida State Conference of the NAACP, and the Northside Coalition of Jacksonville; The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), and Community Justice Project (CJP), with Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP serving as counsel, filed a motion for preliminary injunction today in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida. It seeks to block key portions of H.B.1, Florida's anti-protest law. The groups’ motion for a preliminary injunction comes after filing the initial complaint in May.
Among other things, the law risks criminalizing peaceful protest, shields those who injure or kill protestors (for example by ramming their vehicles into protestors) from civil penalties, discourages people from protesting and otherwise infringes on First Amendment rights. The law was passed as a direct response to racial justice protests in 2020, and appears designed to target those who protest against police violence.. The groups’ motion for a preliminary injunction comes after filing the initial complaint in May.
“This law has changed the landscape for what it means to organize and create safer conditions for our communities in Florida,” said Nailah Summers, co-executive director of Dream Defenders. “Protest has always been a vital tool for accountability for our public officials. We use protest as a vehicle for change and not only does this law silence our voices, but it puts our lives in danger.”
“H.B.1. is a punitive and unjust law created to silence communities, but protect vigilantes. Black Floridians deserve more than a law that continues to suppress their voices.” said Krystina François, Board Member of The Black Collective. “Our constitutional right to assemble peacefully and demand justice from a society that would rather criminalize us than uplift our quality of life is necessary.”
The motion challenges the law’s vague and overbroad anti-protest provisions, which may be used to hold people criminally responsible for participating in a protest merely because unrelated individuals commit acts of violence or other crimes while attending the same protest. As a result of the law’s vague and overbroad language, the state has effectively chilled the speech of the Black-led organizational plaintiffs and silenced dissent.
“Following the local and state-wide protests after the murders of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Barry Gedeus in Broward Co., FL, our elected officials chose to ignore the demands from Floridians to end qualified immunity and support the BREATHE Act during this past legislative session,” said Dara Hill and Tifanny Burks of Black Lives Matter Alliance Broward. “Instead, Gov. DeSantis and his supporters ignored all calls for justice, both from the streets and within the Statehouse, and pushed through an unconstitutional anti-protest bill in an authoritarian attempt to stifle all efforts to hold police accountable. We are filing this preliminary injunction in memory of Linda Sue Davis, James Leatherwood, Damain Martin, Cedric Telasco, Michael Eugene Wilson JR., and all our other neighbors whose untimely deaths demand justice.”
“The provisions in H.B.1 cast a strong chill over peaceful protests in Florida,” said Adora Obi Nweze, president, Florida State Conference of NAACP. “The threat of arrest and prosecution for merely being present at a protest or demonstration is both unwarranted and unreasonable.
Black and Brown people have elevated their concerns in the streets for decades and need to know that in America they are free and their voices are unfettered.”
“H.B.1 targets Black organizers, and their allies who stood up courageously to say ‘Black Lives Matter!’” said Ben Frazier, president, Northside Coalition of Jacksonville. “We protested against police brutality and against social, racial and economic injustice. The enactment of H.B.1 has frightened peaceful protesters from exercising their constitutional right to assemble and protest. Many of our supporters have declined to participate while expressing a fear of unfair arrests by law enforcement officers and the fear of potential bodily harm by vigilantes. The First Amendment, which guarantees our rights to voice our demands, is being muffled, strangled and suffocated. H.B.1 is undemocratic legislation that has stifled our constitutional rights, by obstructing the activity of Black community organizers. H.B.1 must be repealed, abolished or simply outlawed."
“As a recovery community organization that serves people with previous arrest records, Chainless Change is struggling to respond to H.B.1 in a way that will not put our staff, volunteers, and program participants in jeopardy,” said Marq Mitchell, chief executive officer, of Chainless Change. “This law has crippled us and leaves few opportunities to make the community aware of the injustices that our people face on a daily basis. Our governor and his allies have stripped us of our right to assemble and seek accountability from elected leaders.”
RACIAL JUSTICE GROUPS RELEASE JOINT STATEMENT IN RESPONSE TO UNITED NATIONS’ CONDEMNATION OF PASSAGE OF GOVERNOR DESANTIS’ ANTI-PROTEST BILL
When injustice goes unchecked by officials at home, we have no choice but to call on the international community to be a mirror — exposing the many ways the United States fails to uphold the human rights it touts so loudly abroad, especially those of the Black community.
On April 9, 2021, before the passage of Florida’s anti-protest bill (HB1), we called on the United Nations (UN) to do that very thing. We submitted an urgent action letter to the Special Rapporteur on the Rights to Peaceful Assembly and of Association, Clément Voule, to alert him and other UN human rights experts to the ways HB1 violates international human rights law, violates the United States Constitution, and silences the voices of those who demand justice in the face of state violence. Since Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed the bill into law, similar bills have been traveling through state legislatures across the country.
In response, UN experts heeded our call to sound the alarm bells and issued a press release on May 5, 2021, in which UN Special Rapporteur Clément Voule strongly condemned HB1 and similar laws across the country. In the statement, endorsed by the members of the UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent and the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions Morris Tidball-Binz, Special Rapporteur Voule stated what we knew to be true all along: laws like HB1 are targeted state retaliation against movements for racial justice, violate our Constitution, violate various international human rights treaties that the US has ratified, and stifle our movement. This statement by UN human rights experts makes clear that similar bills currently moving through state legislatures across the country are in violation of international law and the U.S. Constitution and should not be signed into law. As the right to protest suffers attacks around the world, from Myanmar to Colombia, we must do everything possible to hold on to this fundamental right.
There is a long history of the international human rights community repeatedly condemning state violence and racism in the United States. More recently, after the murder of George Floyd, E. Tendayi Achiume, Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance emphasized the need for the United States to examine how “systemic racism rooted in legacies of colonialism and transatlantic slavery” is intertwined in its system of modern law enforcement.
HB1 represents yet another affront to the Black communities that have faced generations of exploitation, crippling debt and state violence. We call upon our elected leaders and officials to oppose any such bills and pass legislation to affirmatively protect the right to protest. We will continue to resist attempts to diminish our power and quiet our voices, and build movements that create conditions where all people can lead safe, thriving lives.
Dream Defenders
Community Justice Project
Movement Law Lab
The Black Collective
Law for Black Lives
Movement for Black Lives