Miami Herald: “Civil-rights attorneys are challenging a new set of state laws that establish a crime of ‘mob intimidation’ and enhance penalties for riot-related violence and looting, arguing in a federal lawsuit that the measures unconstitutionally ‘seek to arrest the peaceful expression of free speech.’ The challenge was filed Wednesday, two days after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the controversial package (HB 1), one of his top legislative priorities. The governor laid out a framework for the legislation in September in response to nationwide protests after the May 2020 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Republican lawmakers gave final approval to the changes last week, ignoring objections by Democrats and civil-rights groups that predicted the proposal would be challenged in court. A non-profit organization known as the Lawyers Matter Task Force and other plaintiffs filed the lawsuit in federal court in Orlando, naming as defendants DeSantis, Attorney General Ashley Moody and Orange County Sheriff John Mina.”

“The legislation ‘is a horrendous injustice to Florida citizens and infringes on multiple constitutional rights,’ Shannon Ligon, founder of the Lawyers Matter Task Force, said in a prepared statement Wednesday. The laws, among other things, create a new felony crime of ‘aggravated rioting’ that carries a sentence of up to 15 years in prison and a new crime of ‘mob intimidation,’ which makes it unlawful ‘for a person, assembled with two or more other persons and acting with a common intent, to use force or threaten to use imminent force, to compel or induce, or attempt to compel or induce, another person to do or refrain from doing any act or to assume, abandon, or maintain a particular viewpoint against his or her will.'”