Florida Lawmaker Introduces Bill to Force Certain Bloggers to Register With the State – Or Pay a Fine

A Florida legislator is introducing an outlandish piece of legislation that would force bloggers to register with the state. The legislation, Senate Bill 1316: Information Dissemination , would apply to bloggers who…

Bradley CortrightMar 3, 20234 min read

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It added the legislation “defines a blog as ‘a website or webpage that hosts any blogger and is frequently updated with opinion, commentary, or business content,’ but it says the ‘term does not include the website of a newspaper or other similar publication.'”

State Sen. Jason Brodeur (R), who introduced the bill, told the website Florida Politics, “Paid bloggers are lobbyists who write instead of talk. They both are professional electioneers. If lobbyists have to register and report, why shouldn’t paid bloggers?”

A blogger who declines to register with the state would be subjected to a penalty of $25 per day. The penalty would be capped at $2,500 per post.

Um, what?

It would appear this legislation may be designed to counter something we saw during the 2022 election cycle, where Democratic operatives made websites designed to look like local news outlets. In reality, the sites were pumping out content meant to boost Democrats.

Still, this is a crazy bill. There is no way it would stand up to a legal challenge if it were to become law.

In a statement, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) labeled the bill “fundamentally un-American” and “an affront to the First Amendment and our national commitment to freedom of the press.”

“It is difficult to imagine a legislative proposal more fundamentally at odds with our nation’s founding spirit than requiring citizens and journalists to register their publications with the government under pain of fines,” it continued. “The First Amendment protects not only a free press, but the right to speak anonymously — a cherished tradition from America’s earliest days, when anonymous pamphleteers played a crucial role in the founding of our constitutional republic.”

The idea the state would be tracking when a website posts a blog, who is paying for posts, and how much writers are being paid is disturbing. The government has no business tracking such information.

And the bill does not specify what would qualify other than stating it would not apply to newspapers. If some friends start a podcast and a blog about politics as a hobby and receive contributions from Patreon, would a contributor to the blog, who is not a political operative but was paid for their post, have to register with the state?

Admittedly, the fines of $25 a day are not too severe. But it could have a chilling effect on bloggers and Free Speech. They would have to choose between disclosing who is compensating them, how much they are receiving, and how often they are posting, or just not writing about the state government. And again, this is just not information the state needs to know.

This bill is a terrible idea and one that runs contrary to our notions of Free Speech and freedom of the press. And it should be promptly rejected by the legislature.