Judge’s ruling on state’s abortion scheme ads confirms government cannot censor ‘disinformation’

A judge in Florida has ruled that statements about a proposed abortion scheme, even if wrong, cannot arbitrarily be censored by government officials who don’t want that misinformation, or disinformation, or malinformation, from spreading.

And the ruling, which right now is only at the level of a judge in Florida, if affirmed up the chain of appellate review, could spell disaster for the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris regime’s demand for widespread censorship of what they and their party say is wrong.

A report from Fox News explains the Florida district judge has released a temporary restraining order preventing the state government from pursuing action against television stations that have been running ads promoting a vast expansion of the lucrative abortion industry in the state.

“While Defendant Ladapo refuses to even agree with this simple fact, Plaintiff’s political advertisement is political speech—speech at the core of the First Amendment,” District Judge Mark E. Walker stated. “The government cannot excuse its indirect censorship of political speech simply by declaring the disfavored speech is ‘false.’ ‘The very purpose of the First Amendment is to foreclose public authority from assuming a guardianship of the public mind through regulating the press, speech, and religion,'” Walker quoted from the U.S. Supreme Court.

At issue were promotions for the abortion industry that were being aired by stations being paid by Floridians Protecting Freedom, which is pushing a huge expansion of the abortion industry in the state.

The group sued Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo and former general counsel to the Florida Department of Health John Wilson when they warned stations not to air the false information in the ads.

The pro-abortion activists said such a move violated their First Amendment right to run political ads.

The ads were condemned by Jae Williams, of the state health department, for being “unequivocally false and detrimental to public health in Florida.”

A spokesman for Gov. Ron DeSantis said, “Surprise, surprise, the most overturned judge on the district court issued another order that excites the press, but these current stories all look past the core issue – the ads are unequivocally false and put the lives and health of pregnant women at risk. Florida’s heartbeat protection law always protects the life of a mother and includes exceptions for victims of rape, incest and human trafficking.”

The issue that could unsettled the Biden-Harris censorship is the fact the use of the ads apparently is not dependent on their truthfulness.

Leftists long have insisted that whatever they do not accept as true obviously is misinformation or disinformation and must be suppressed. Democrats long have worked with social and other media outlets to suppress all information they dislike.

It’s appeared most often during election seasons.

A primary example of that censorship and suppression came during the 2020 presidential election. In that case the information actually was true, but was suppressed widely across the nation by a long list of activist media outlets.

That was the claim, false, that the Biden family scandal details in Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop computer were Russian disinformation.

In fact, all the scandal details were true, but the information was suppressed during the election season, especially after the FBI interfered in the election results and told media outlets to censor that information.

In fact, it was true, and a subsequent polling showed that had those details been reported ordinarily, Joe Biden probably would have lost the election.

John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute recently commented on the issue, which has been brought up over and over even in this election by Hillary Clinton, who has insisted that Democrats must control the media and its messages.

“In a perfect example of the Nanny State mindset at work, Hillary Clinton insists that the powers-that-be need ‘total control’ in order to make the internet a safer place for users and protect us from harm. Clinton is not alone in her distaste for unregulated, free speech online,” Whitehead said.

He said the fight is over “where censorship (corporate and government) begins and free speech ends.”

He said the pertinent point is that “government will use any excuse to suppress dissent and control the narrative.”

In recent years, it’s been the power brokers behind media, publishing, the web’s social programs and more, that have insisted that conservative thought be suppressed.

“On the internet, falsehoods and lies abound, misdirection and misinformation dominate, and conspiracy theories go viral,” he said. “This is to be expected, and the response should be more speech, not less.”

However, to America’s government, “these forms of ‘disinformation’ rank right up there with terrorism, drugs, violence, and disease: societal evils so threatening that ‘we the people’ should be willing to relinquish a little of our freedoms for the sake of national security.”

Now there’s a court ruling that even if information is said by the government to be false, it cannot be targeted with censorship, outside of the accept standards that one cannot make threats or injure another person.

He said, “Disinformation isn’t the problem. Government coverups and censorship are the problem. Unfortunately, the government has become increasingly intolerant of speech that challenges its power, reveals its corruption, exposes its lies, and encourages the citizenry to push back against the government’s many injustices. Every day in this country, those who dare to speak their truth to the powers-that-be find themselves censored, silenced or fired.”

He said the “control” demanded by Clinton already is far too close.

“In New York City, for example, you could find yourself forcibly hospitalized for suspected mental illness if you carry ‘firmly held beliefs not congruent with cultural ideas,’ exhibit a ‘willingness to engage in meaningful discussion,’ have ‘excessive fears of specific stimuli,’ or refuse ‘voluntary treatment recommendations,” he wrote.

Slate explained that DeSantis wanted the pro-abortion promotions to end because while pro-abortion advocates claimed their ads were true the state health department disagreed, creating the conflict.

The judge, appointed by Barack Obama, essentially concluded that the government cannot censor messages because it believes the information is wrong.

The ruling, in fact, cited a Supreme Court decision that said the government can’t coerce third parties into censoring speech it doesn’t like.

The judge, in a statement that easily could hit hard at the Biden-Harris censorship agenda, stated, “The government cannot excuse its indirect censorship of political speech simply by declaring the disfavored speech is ‘false.'”

Meanwhile, an investigation is under way whether the signatures putting the amendment on the ballot were obtained fraudulently.