Calling it “an attack” on people of color, House and Senate Democrats on Thursday decried a legal memo issued this week by Attorney General James Uthmeier that said numerous Florida laws designed to combat racism are discriminatory.
Uthmeier’s memo, issued Monday on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, said state laws giving preferences to minorities or requiring quotas are racially discriminatory. The attorney general said he would refuse to “defend or enforce” such laws.
“Racial discrimination is wrong. It is also unconstitutional,” he wrote.
Under Florida law, the attorney general must provide legal opinions requested by people including the governor, Cabinet members and legislative leaders. Uthmeier’s memo said that he requested the opinion.
More than a dozen Black House and Senate members gathered Thursday for a news conference in the Capitol to criticize the opinion. Gov. Ron DeSantis in February 2025 appointed Uthmeier to serve as attorney general, and Uthmeier is running for election to the Cabinet post in November.
Eliminating the programs targeted by Uthmeier would unravel years of progress aimed at ensuring Black- and Hispanic-owned businesses can better compete for government contracts and requiring minority representation on government boards and councils, the Democratic lawmakers said.
“These laws exist because discrimination exists,” Sen. LaVon Bracy Davis, D-Ocoee, told reporters.
Uthmeier served as DeSantis’ chief of staff before being appointed attorney general and helped the governor quash policies and programs designed to foster diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, in business, government and education.
The laws targeted in Uthmeier’s opinion “represent decades of bipartisan policy and carefully tailored programs that, now, with the stroke of a pen, are in jeopardy,” Sen. Darryl Rouson, D-St. Petersburg, said.
“In effect, the opinion seeks to discourage acknowledging race at all when crafting solutions to inequality,” he added.
Sen. Mack Bernard, D-West Palm Beach, called Uthmeier’s actions a “direct threat” to the progress made by Black people over more than half a century.
“They risk dragging our state backward toward a pre-integration era, one in which power is concentrated, representation is diminished, and trust in our institutions is eroded. These actions do not strengthen Florida. They weaken it,” Bernard said.
House Minority Leader Fentrice Driskell, D-Tampa, told reporters that Uthmeier released the opinion on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday to provoke Black lawmakers.
“It was a taunt,” she said.
The Democrats pointed to bills filed for this year’s legislative session that would, in part, carry out Uthmeier’s wishes.
As an example, one measure (SB 1662) would repeal affirmative action requirements in state agencies and in state attorneys’ offices and eliminate other parts of Florida laws addressing diversity.
A number of other bills also include provisions that would eliminate diversity or affirmative action in education and other areas.
The protections in law were created “because discrimination existed and still exists in hiring and contracting and access and opportunity,” Rep. RaShon Young, D-Orlando, said.
“They exist because talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not. And Florida has a responsibility, a duty of care, if you will, to protect its people from harm, including economic harm, and including the harm of being locked out or left out or sidelined from opportunity by systems that were never neutral from the beginning,” he added.
Bernard said DeSantis should remove Uthmeier from office.
“This is not reform. It is a deliberate dismantling of best practices in the pursuit of political power, and it should alarm every Floridian, regardless of party affiliation,” Bernard said.
–Dara Kam, News Service of Florida
Disgusted says
So the party that protects pedos, teargas babies, and violates human rights want to openly discriminate and do what took people decades of fighting for and just undo it overnight. Welcome to the corpo-fascist oligarchy!
JimboXYZ says
““They exist because talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not. And Florida has a responsibility, a duty of care, if you will, to protect its people from harm, including economic harm, and including the harm of being locked out or left out or sidelined from opportunity by systems that were never neutral from the beginning,” he added.”
And that’s why competition must thrive DEI&B (formerly Affirmative Action & Equal Employment Opportunity) has had it’s share of racial & gender discrimination. Not “reverse discrimination”. There is no such thing as “reverse discrimination”, only “discrimination”. How come there aren’t any Asians or Hispanics in that photo ? The pecking order is nepotism, cronyism and then DEI&B as layers of discrimination. The woman that became certified in a recent story, she’s more qualified as any of those that passed her over for that, 96 hours of continuing education, the bar is raised for some, lowered for others, and sometimes they get lucky & pick the most qualified & top performer. From what I’ve seen from news stories that’s a rare to never hire. Diversity really means Dysfunctional. The labor force is quite incestuous. Work at enough places & long enough, that much is obvious. Wait until the office cheaters get caught & outed. The sexual harassers that end up getting an employer sued for that. A lot of employees are opportunists that way, might surprise anyone, if only the walls could talk.
PaulT says
Uthmeier announcing what must be considered an anti minority opinion on MLK day certainly suggests it was targeted a black people.
Right wing politicians have tried to hijack the word racist, insisting that defending or protecting or in this case providing equal rights and opportunities to racial minrities is somehow discrimination against the white majority and thus racism against them.
It’s a stale argument though the fact that so many on the right support the view is troubling.
Uthmeiers argument is nonsense, his claim it gives minority bidders an advantage is absurd. Ensuring that racial and gender minorities have access to jobs and the bidding process is just to provide a level playing field in a society where ‘Goof Old Boys’ still rule.
If Uthmeier claims to be’s keen to ensure that bidding on contracts in Florida is fair and square, where was he when the State carelessly awarded $200 million in no bid contracts for the ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ detention camp?
Skibum says
Trump, Steven Miller, Ron DeSantis, James Uthmeier and others… revisiting Adolf Hitler’s eventual purge of all humans that monster believed were destroying the Arian race. He too gained the undying support of most of that country’s citizens by getting gullible Germans to believe they were being discriminated against, overrun and somehow harmed by Jews, by gays, by all those who Hitler hated for one reason or another.
The 21st century version of hate, intolerance, bigotry and fascism dictates to our country’s citizens that any anti-discrimination laws are wrong. They are “woke”, and somehow harming or destroying the white race. Those who are uneducated, misinformed, and easily led down the wacko rabbit holes might have understood they are being duped if they had learned critical thinking skills… or at least paused and consulted that noodle between their ears.
Welcome to the “free” state of Florida they say. The very same ones who are pushing this extremist white nationalist agenda. Banning books in a concerted effort to keep people uninformed and uneducated about our history as well as what is going on in our nation and the world today. Continuing to use the courts and federal regulatory agencies in efforts to ban liberal media outlets, late night as well as daytime talk shows and even comedians they disapprove of, to keep people uninformed and uneducated about what is going on. Manipulating journalism and media sources to try to make us believe that what we see with our own eyes somehow didn’t really happen.
Hello, people… wake the hell up! It is the same psychological tactics that North Korea uses on their prisoners… I mean people. They like to call that country the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” when anyone can see that name is both laughable and exactly opposite of what North Korea really is.
Kudos to the idiot AG Uthmeier in Tallahassee though for trying, I guess. It makes sense when you think about it. I mean, with all of the state’s bans, all of the state sanctioned oppression of it’s citizens, all of the many ways to fire state employees just for saying certain words like “gay” or phrases like “climate change”, all of the ways tenured state college professors are being systematically removed from their positions for being too liberal or free thinkers, they had to come up with some rationalization for why anti-discrimination and DEI laws were perceived as evil. Of course… the good ole white race, the Arians, is once again in danger of extinction. The more I say Uthmeier, the more naziesque it sounds.
BIG Neighbor says
The objective and timing of this is to provoke hate and counteract long standing policy so, what…the jackass reality show in DC grow market share on social media with audiences of insolent neocons that never quite matured? Profiteering off of hate is wicked, plain and simple. I guess we’re too sick and stupid to learn what Canadians and other civil societies already know…what warring within your own house does to the entire household, “eh?”