The tow truck story begins in the early 1990s in Northlake, Illinois. For decades the city had maintained a list of tow truck companies available for use by the Police Department. The list worked simply enough — when police needed towing services, they simply went down the list before each tow, with the next towing company receiving the next call. While towing companies didn’t have ato be on the list, once placed on it, the city’s policy was to remove companies only “for cause.
But if the government isn’t obligated to hire me, does that mean it can fire me for any reason? Absolutely not. Anti-discrimination laws and constitutional principles prevent it from firing me or punishing me because of my race, sex or religion, for example. And even if I’m a public employee, the First Amendment is going to prevent the government from punishing me when I speak as a private citizen on matters of public concern.
Make no mistake, the Florida government’s actions against Disney were directly motivated by the company’s disagreement with a policy pushed by DeSantis.
But those statements were just the tip of the iceberg. State Rep. Spencer Roach said, “If Disney wants to embrace woke ideology, it seems fitting that they should be regulated by Orange County.” This statement refers to the initial punishment chosen by DeSantis and Florida Republicans — the planned dissolution of an entity called the Reedy Creek Improvement District, one of more than 1,800 special tax districts that dot the Florida landscape.