ACLU predicts Florida Republicans will pursue ‘inhumane’ Donald Trump policies at state level

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The ACLU of Florida sees attacks on immigrants and democracy on Florida’s horizon, but intends to defend residents from political threats.

A press briefing with the civil rights group spotlighted increases in penalties and further regulation of Florida’s ballot petition process. Pamela Burch Fort, legislative counsel for the ACLU of Florida, said proposals like outlawing paid petition gathering for ballot initiatives could be “the final nail in the coffin of direct democracy.”

“This has been a right for many years that has been more difficult and more onerous over the years,” Ford said.

After ballot proposals to reverse Florida’s near-total abortion ban and to legalize recreational use of marijuana both won majority support even while falling short of the 60% threshold for passage, advocates said they have been struck by efforts to further silence the voice of voters.

Kara Gross, legislative director and senior policy counsel for the ACLU of Florida, said that’s especially troubling when such a large majority of voters openly rejected the Legislature’s recent decision to instate one of the strictest abortion bans in the country.

“Just to be clear, a minority of Floridians, just 43%, less than half of Floridians who voted on this, were able to defeat a measure that the majority of Floridians voted for, and in any other state that had a ballot initiative, this would have passed,” Gross said.

“The bottom line is that Floridians deserve the freedom to make decisions on critical issues that impact our daily lives, and the Legislature and the Governor should not be trying to take away that freedom.”

The organization is already closely watching bills the ACLU sees as voter suppression attempts, particularly HB 831 and SB 396, which could soon require any government identification for non-citizens, even those here legally, to be marked with the letters “NC.”

While purportedly a move to prevent non-citizens from voting, something already against Florida law, Gross said the use of a Scarlet Letter-type notation on state IDs will subject many Florida residents to undue harassment in their everyday lives.

Bacardi Jackson, Executive Director of the ACLU of Florida, said she’s also concerned about further threats on marginalized communities with Florida’s education institutions.

“Local communities are being stripped of their power, with state leaders overriding elections as well as local policies on policing, housing and education, to impose a rigid, top-down political agenda that does not reflect the will not meet the needs of our communities that does not reflect the will nor meet the needs of our communities,” she said.

But threats against immigration appear to be especially sharp, ACLU officials said, as demonstrated by the recent passage of mass deportation legislation in a Special Session.

While Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Legislature seemed sharply at odds of particulars of policy, the two did come together this month — in a short Special Session with little public input — to enact a new law empowering state law enforcement to help crack down on immigrant communities. That showed a devotion among Florida Republicans to implement President Donald Trump’s illegal immigration crackdown.

“I think that the Governor was very clear in his proposal that he wanted to have the harshest immigration laws in the country, and the Legislature was also very clear in their response to that, that they also wanted to have the harshest immigration laws in the country,” Gross said.

“And they seem to have gotten together in order to do that. So while there was a lot of back-and-forth in the beginning, it seems that both of their efforts were designed to provide maximum participation to Trump’s cruel and inhumane mass deportation agenda.”