The new attorney general of Florida was eager to make news in his first week on the job. So James Uthmeier said he was going to sue Target for supporting LGBTQ rights.
It wasn’t a very smart legal move, but it caused a lot of shock value, which got Uthmeier the attention he wanted from Fox News.
Now Florida is really stepping it up. Politico reported that Uthmeier and Gov. Ron DeSantis decided last week to set aside an extra $20 million in public funds to sue more companies that support values that the two politicians don’t agree with. This was a follow-up action that wasn’t given much attention.
The news site said, “Watch out, corporate America.” “Florida here we come.”
Judges who are conservative and believe in the U.S. Constitution and free speech have already turned down this kind of ideological battle many times, according to DeSantis.
In this case, DeSantis and Uthmeier say they aren’t suing companies just because they don’t agree with certain points of view (even though Uthmeier said Target’s pledge to inclusion was part of a “leftist agenda”). Instead, the two men say they are fighting over the value of stock because they are in charge of the Florida Retirement System, which has a lot of stock. These people think it’s okay for Florida to sue a company if it takes a social stand that causes “backlash” and lowers the value of its stock.
Their case is wrong from a legal, moral, and logical point of view.
To begin, the government has no right to tell private people or businesses what beliefs they can hold. It’s against the Constitution to treat people differently because of their views. You might like life in North Korea if you want the government to control what you say.
If you want to understand what it means to tell businesses they can’t take a stand that might cause “backlash” from the people, look at history. In the Jim Crow South, segregationists would have loved a law like that.
Now, even if you don’t agree with any of that, we do know that these politicians don’t really believe the false reasons they’re giving to sue these companies. The reason for this is that Florida has a lot of money invested in another company whose stock price has dropped because of politics: Tesla. No one from the Republican Party in Florida has said anything about that.
Tesla’s stock has been going down “For seven straight weeks, since Elon Musk went to Washington to join the Trump administration…the longest such losing streak for Tesla in its 15 years as a public company,” according to a story from CNBC.
The story used quotes from several market experts to say, “Even the most optimistic analysts and many fans have had to admit that Musk’s politics have made Tesla and its products less appealing to a wide range of customers and investors.”
Well, financial reports show that the state of Florida has invested a lot of money in Tesla. Also, Tesla is a lot less valuable now than it was. Where is Florida’s case against Elon Musk then?
That’s the question Jim Colbert had. Colbert runs a radio show in the afternoon on WTKS that I’ve been on every week for years. Colbert is a Republican who has backed DeSantis many times.
Colbert was curious when he heard that Florida was going after Target for allegedly lowering the value of its own stock. He asked if the state was also going after Tesla.
“My question is simple: Does the state of Florida plan to bring a similar lawsuit against Tesla for losses being suffered because of Elon Musk’s actions?” he asked in an email to Uthmeier’s office. Tesla stock is down 25% as of February 26, 2025. If my study is correct, Florida’s teachers’ pensions also have a lot of money invested in Tesla.
Colbert is a classic conservative who wanted things to stay the same. He said there was no answer.
