Dara Kam, News Service of Florida

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.”

Siding with a union that represents law-enforcement officers, a state appeals court on Tuesday unanimously decided that a constitutional amendment expanding victims’ rights can shield the identities of police officers who were threatened in use-of-force incidents.

A plan to shutter up to four state prisons is alarming officials in Florida’s rural regions where correctional institutions have played an outsized role in providing jobs and supporting businesses for decades.

Over the past decade, Florida voters approved changes to the state Constitution that legalized medical marijuana, restored felons’ voting rights and directed more money to land and water conservation. But a pair of proposals approved Monday by a House committee would make it harder for organizations to get future constitutional amendments on the ballot -- and to pass them. The proposals, approved by the House Public Integrity and Elections Committee, are the latest attempts in years of efforts by Republican lawmakers to clamp down on the ballot initiative process.

Four months ago, Gov. Ron DeSantis bragged that other states should emulate voting procedures in Florida, where former President Donald Trump’s solid Election Day victory over President Joe Biden was done and dusted long before midnight.

Gov. Ron DeSantis is proposing sweeping changes to the state’s clemency process by doing away with a minimum five-year wait before felons can seek to have their civil rights, including the right to vote, restored.