JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A move to toughen the laws against hate speech in Jacksonville is meeting pushback from a city council member.
The city council was quick to pass laws in 2023 after a rash of racist and antisemitic projections appeared on various buildings and the stadium in Jacksonville.
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Now, there’s an effort to toughen those laws even more. But Councilman Terrance Freeman said that’s going too far.
“It is placing our first responders, particularly our members of JSO in tougher positions where they are now going to have to try and determine if something is hate speech or not,” Freeman said.
Freeman talked to News4JAX after he spoke to a council committee.
“I just think that this bill is not needed. When you look at what we did as a body last year, with the anti-semitic deal and projections on buildings, to when you look at the state already covers this. To me, I see this as political pandering,” Freeman said.
Freeman also said that as a Black man that is what’s insulting to him.
Councilman Jimmy Peluso introduced the measure with the backing of other council members.
“I’m pretty shocked, I’m not gonna lie to you. I knew that there might be some individuals who might not vote for the bill for different reasons. But to think of this as some kind of PR move, it’s really kind of frustrating,” Peluso said. “This is a reaction to things that are actually happening in our city. Three individuals are dead because of the color of their skin. Our sheriff has said that we’ve had multiple individuals dropping off leaflets in different parts of our community attacking the Jewish community, attacking African Americans. I mean, these are things that are happening and to ignore that, or to not do anything, we have members of our community coming to city council meeting saying, ‘What are you going to do about it?’”
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Freeman pushed back.
“The law doesn’t see it that way. As I stated, if you go to our state statute, and you look at it, it already has that in place, that if you can prove that there’s prejudice, that only to an act, then it can upgrade it from a misdemeanor to a felony, you can upgrade it already. And so it is basically redundancy,” Freeman said.
Wednesday afternoon, Councilman Peluso will hold a special meeting at city hall to address this issue, answer questions, and see if more needs to be done.