Ron DeSantis gets a win in a lawsuit over Gainesville’s utility

©2023 The News Service of Florida

A federal judge Thursday dismissed claims against Gov. Ron DeSantis in a challenge to a new state law that overhauled the municipal utility in the Gainesville area.

U.S. District Judge Allen Winsor ruled against the group Gainesville Residents United and six individual plaintiffs, who filed the lawsuit in July and made a series of allegations, including that the law would improperly restrict speech rights.

The law, approved during this year’s legislative session, created the Gainesville Regional Utilities Authority to replace the longstanding Gainesville Regional Utilities agency.

It gave DeSantis power to appoint the authority’s board members after Gainesville Regional Utilities had been under the control of the city commission.

The allegation about speech rights involves part of the law that says the authority “shall consider only pecuniary factors and utility industry best practices standards, which do not include consideration of the furtherance of social, political or ideological interests.”

The lawsuit contended that the law would prevent plaintiffs and other people from seeking “redress of grievances pertaining to social, political, environmental, and ideological issues that are inherent in the operation of a utility system.”

But Winsor rejected the argument, writing that the plaintiffs had not met legal tests to establish standing to pursue the First Amendment claim.

“There is nothing in the act’s (the law’s) language prohibiting Gainesville Residents United, its members, or anyone else from speaking about ‘social, political, or ideological interests,’ either at authority meetings or elsewhere,” Winsor wrote. “Instead, the act only prohibits the authority’s consideration of those interests when making utility decisions. Plaintiffs thus have not plausibly alleged that the act ‘objectively chills’ their speech and thus have not plausibly alleged standing on the free speech claims.”

The lawsuit was initially filed against DeSantis, Attorney General Ashley Moody, Secretary of State Cord Byrd and the city of Gainesville.

Moody and Byrd were dropped from the case in October, leaving only the city as a defendant after Thursday’s ruling.

In a separate document, Winsor described the city as a “nominal defendant” and gave the plaintiffs two weeks to show why claims against the city should not be dismissed.