Attorneys for fired Florida Department of Health analyst Rebekah Jones, who has drawn national attention for her battles with the DeSantis administration, argued in the lawsuit that a search warrant to enter her home Dec. 7 “was obtained in bad faith and with no legitimate object or purpose.”
Rights & Liberties
Court’s Conservatives Are Right: Pandemic Limits on Houses of Worship Are Unconstitutional
The Supreme Court’s ruling overturning its own recent precedent to forbid attendance limits at houses of worship because of Covid was not an ideological decision so much as a victory for the First Amendment that liberals should be thankful for.
Florida Lawmakers Again Will Consider Requiring Moment of Silence in Schools
An effort to require public-school students to engage in a moment of silence at the start of each school day is back before the state Legislature. Sen. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, refiled legislation (SB 282) on Thursday that would require principals to direct first-period teachers to set aside one to two minutes for “quiet reflection.”
Trevor Tucker, in Remarkable Shift, Provides 3-2 Majority to Add ‘Gender Identity’ to Long-Sought School Protections
The Flagler County School Board this evening reversed its April vote and added “gender identity” to its anti-discrimination policy, ending a year-long and at times controversial and embittered debate over the identity and rights of LGBTQ students.
Why Was Flagler’s County Administrator Allowed to Illegally Start a Public Meeting With a Christian Prayer?
A county commissioner read out a long and explicitly Christian prayer prepared by County Administrator Jerry Cameron at Monday’s commission meeting, breaking decades of precedent without prior legal review, public discussion or commissioners’ prior knowledge.
Pistols, a Hearse and Trucks Playing Chicken: Why Some Voters Felt Harassed and Intimidated at the Polls
Across the country, people complained about threats, aggressive electioneering and racist language both at early voting locations and on Election Day. We’ve corroborated some of those accounts.
Enough with ‘Patently False and Fabricated Conspiracy Theories’ on 2020 Vote, a GOP Elections Supervisor Says
Pasco County Elections Supervisor Brian Corley, a Republican, condemns continuing attacks on the integrity of the presidential election– the most secure, transparent election in history, he says, now undermined by “destructive rhetoric” that is “prioritizing politics at the expense of our country’s founding principles.”
Covid Justice: Florida Court Rules Zoom Hearings Don’t Violate Defendants’ Constitutional Rights
In a legal test of remote court proceedings during the Covid-19 pandemic, an appeals court Wednesday rejected arguments that using Zoom technology in a probation-violation hearing would violate a defendant’s constitutional rights.
The Strange Case of Cornelius Baker’s Dangling Fate on Death Row, 13 Years After a Bunnell Murder
Conflicting Supreme Court cases gave convicted murdered Cornelius Baker hope that he could get a new sentencing trial and escape the death penalty, as have two previous Flagler death row inmates. But the conflicting cases, again reflecting the contradictions of Florida’s capital punishment laws, now leave his fate in an absurd twilight zone.
Oral Arguments on Alachua’s Mask Mandate Evoke Hijabs, Nazis, KKK, Crime and, Finally, Public Health
Oral arguments about Alachua County’s mask mandate before a three-judge panel of the First Circuit Court of Appeal Monday was a spectacle of audacious leaps and strange analogies that nevertheless illustrated the sharp and far from resolved divide between mask proponents and anti-maskers, including on the judicial bench.