A.G. Gancarski
Former Attorney General Pam Bondi backed the current Attorney General’s play to force the federal government to allow cruises to resume operations in Florida without a vaccine passport requirement.
Bondi, the immediate predecessor to current Attorney General Ashley Moody, offered her legal analysis Tuesday morning to the national audience of “Fox and Friends.”
A new law, which goes into effect July 1, would impose a $5,000 fine per incident of a business, including cruise lines, requiring proof of vaccination. In the shorter term, the state and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are involved in a lawsuit.
“Florida is wide-open. We are open for business. You wouldn’t even know COVID had happened here,” Bondi contended, in a breezy description of a disease that has taken nearly 37,000 lives thus far in Florida alone.
Bondi then went on to make another easily rebutted claim.
“The majority of our state, they are being vaccinated,” Bondi said, even as official data shows that number still under 40%.
Contending the right not to disclose vaccination status is a matter of “privacy,” Bondi then went on offense against the federal government, saying that “now they’re trying to penalize our cruise lines.”
“We’re not going to let them punish our cruise lines,” Bondi affirmed.
Interviewer Will Cain asked whether Florida has the right to impose this kind of law on cruise lines. The answer was somewhat muddled.
“When they’re in our state, again, our theme parks don’t have to do that; other businesses don’t have to do that. Are the cruise lines stuck in the middle? Absolutely.”
Bondi praised Moody for filing suit against the CDC and the federal government, a process in mediation currently.
“We’re hoping for a good resolution,” Bondi said, noting sailing is happening elsewhere.
“We shouldn’t have to have a test cruise line just because it’s in our state. We love our cruise industry,” Bondi affirmed.
Both Gov. Ron DeSantis and Moody continue to defend the state’s position ahead of a statutorily mandated showdown at the beginning of July.
“We are going to enforce Florida law,” DeSantis said Friday in Lakeland. “I mean, we have Florida law. We have laws that protect the people and the privacy of our citizens, and we are going to enforce it. In fact, I have no choice but to enforce it.”
“What the CDC has done by closing the cruise industry for over a year, 15 months almost, 14 months, they do not have the authority to do it,” DeSantis said.
Early in the pandemic, the Donald Trump administration imposed a shutdown of the cruise industry. However, pushback only got going under the Joe Biden presidency, with the suit filed in April.
But once the hot quotes were delivered to the Lakeland press, DeSantis acknowledged legal reality, suggesting the rhetorical pyrotechnics are just part of the messaging process.
“That case is in mediation right now,” DeSantis noted. “You know, maybe there will be a resolution. Ultimately, we want to vindicate the state’s immediate interest in this, but there is a larger point.”
Moody made similar points regarding the mediation process last month, noting her own tenure as a judge.
“We have been asked by the court to mediate. That’s not unusual. As a judge for over a decade, I have often referred parties to mediate,” Moody said.
One comment
tjb
June 3, 2021 at 8:51 am
“You wouldn’t even know COVID had happened here,” Bondi contended, … heartless POS — Pam tell that to the families of the 37,000 Floridians that died from Covid 19. Is Trumpism, that you are affiliated with, designed to destroy the lives of Americans and Floridians?
Comments are closed.