Florida lawmakers are about to hand a revenge tool to a much-criticized industry | Opinion

There’s perhaps no industry in Florida that catches as much flack as “Big Sugar.” Activists have criticized sugar farmers for their impacts on Everglades restoration, the stymying of water quality improvement efforts and the health effects of sugarcane burning south of Lake Okeechobee.

That criticism has been, for the most part, spot on. But now lawmakers are considering handing the industry, and others, a revenge tool against critics.

A provision tucked into a 60-plus-page bill dealing with farming issues would make it easier for agricultural interests to sue for defamation. The legislation doesn’t specifically mention sugar farmers but appears geared toward chilling criticism that is most often directed toward them. If approved, the proposal will send a message to environmental groups that are often at odds with the industry — and to the journalists covering these issues — that costly litigation could be the price for speaking up.

“The danger in the current environment is that these laws can be weaponized,” Bobby Block, executive director of the First Amendment Foundation, told the Herald Editorial Board.

Is there a public good that will come out of this? It’s unclear, partly because the provision has received little attention. It skated by largely unnoticed until the website Seeking Rents published a story in December. The bill came from Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson’s office. Simpson has worked closely with the sugar industry in the past and his political committees have received hundreds of thousands of dollars from companies U.S. Sugar and Florida Crystals, according to Seeking Rents.

On its face, the section of Senate Bill 290 looks innocuous. It would broaden Florida’s obscure food libel law that protects agriculture from “disparagement.”

When suing someone for defamation, plaintiffs usually have to prove someone published information they knew was false, or that they acted with “reckless disregard” for the truth. Florida in the 1990s lowered that bar for producers of perishable agricultural food. They can sue critics for spreading “false information,” which is loosely defined as information about the safety of a product that’s “not based on reliable, scientific facts and reliable, scientific data which the disseminator knows or should have known to be false,” Florida statute says.

The Legislature passed the law to protect producers of items that can quickly spoil — for example, fresh fruit and vegetables — from losing business because of a claim about their product. Florida and other states passed similar legislation after a “60 Minutes” segment in 1989 discussed the risks associated with a chemical used by the commercial apple industry. Growers in Washington State claimed the segment cost them $250 million in lost sales and sued CBS. A judge dismissed the lawsuit in 1993.

Under SB 290, and its House companion, HB 433, Florida’s food libel laws would now also cover nonperishable agricultural goods — including sugar. Critically, the bill would also allow the industry to sue over disparaging statements about “any agricultural practices used in the production of such products.” That appears to target sugarcane burning in the Glades region, a harvesting practice residents and activists have fought for years because of its health impacts on nearby communities.

Block told the Editorial Board the legislation would also chill scientific research into water quality and the impacts of runoff pollution from Lake Okeechobee into Florida’s coastal estuaries — research that has often zeroed in on the environmental impact of sugar farming.

“Researchers, environmental advocates and journalists who raise evidence-based concerns about these impacts... could face costly litigation simply for doing their jobs,” Block wrote in a letter to the Florida Senate opposing the proposal.

SB 290 sponsor, Sen. Keith Truenow, R-Tavares, didn’t respond to a request for comment left at his Tallahassee office. In December, he told the News Service of Florida that, “There are some things that we produce in the state of Florida that aren’t perishable. They don’t fall under the statute... We want to include them, like sugar or some other products.”

In a lot of defamation cases, the point of suing isn’t always to win in court. The costs of fighting a lawsuit alone can bankrupt a small environmental group — and chill free speech. That’s the opposite of the “Free State of Florida” slogan Republicans have promoted in recent years.