Florida Has Already Wasted Over $700k Of Taxpayer Funds Defending Its Unconstitutional Content Moderation Bill

We’ve already talked about how Georgia looks to be moving forward with its clearly unconstitutional content moderation bill. Back when Florida signed its content moderation bill into law (which actually put in a few things to pretend to appear more constitutional, unlike Georgia’s…), we noted that the state was going to waste a ton of taxpayer funds before losing. And, that’s exactly what’s happened. Florida’s bill was tossed out as unconstitutional, fairly easily. While an appeal on that ruling will be heard soon, all this is doing is racking up Florida’s expensive legal bills.

CCIA has a post up effectively warning Georgia not to go down this same path, and in the middle of that post it notes that, via some public records requests, Florida has apparently already spent somewhere around $700,000 of taxpayer dollars defending the law in court. And that’s even before the appeal is heard — meaning that it’s quite likely that Florida will set over a million dollars of taxpayer money on fire in an attempt to violate the 1st Amendment rights of internet websites.

As states around the country continue to pass these kinds of laws, it makes me wonder at what point supposedly “small government” elected officials who are “concerned about the budget” will realize that wasting taxpayer funds on a quixotic attack on the 1st Amendment just isn’t worth it? Or do they not care, since it’s not their money that’s being spent?