Ron DeSantis signs anti-woke law to stop banks from freezing Floridians’ bank accounts based on their politics — but Treasury says the law puts ‘America’s national security at risk’

“We reject a global elite trying to force their ideology on us by capturing major institutions,” DeSantis, who has led an aggressive campaign against so-called “woke” ideology in the Sunshine State, said when signing HB 989 into law.

“We are not going to allow big banks to discriminate based on someone’s political or religious beliefs.”

But while DeSantis claims he’s fighting discrimination, the U.S. Treasury has labeled the Florida law — and other similar laws under consideration in mostly conservative states like Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana and South Dakota — as a potential threat to national security.

Here’s why policymakers are butting heads over so-called debanking — and what it means for Americans.

Florida deters debanking

DeSantis’ goal with HB 989 was to “strengthen Florida’s protections for consumers … from being forced to adopt ideologies or reflect a preferred political behavior.”

Per an Associated Press report, DeSantis said the law will protect the access that conservative groups and the firearms industry have to the financial sector — and stop them from having their accounts frozen or closed.

The law makes it illegal for banks to “deny or cancel, suspend, or terminate its services to a person, or to otherwise discriminate against a person in making available such services” on the basis of several factors, including (but not limited to):

• The person’s political opinions, speech, or affiliations
• Any factor if it is not a quantitative, impartial, and risk-based standard, including any such factor related to the person’s business sector
• The person’s engagement in the lawful manufacture, distribution, sale, purchase, or use of firearms or ammunition
• The person’s engagement in the exploration, production, utilization, transportation, sale, or manufacture of fossil fuel-based energy, timber, mining, or agriculture

It also allows Floridians to appeal “unwarranted account cancellations and restrictions” through a coordinated complaint and investigatory process within the state’s Office of Financial Regulation.

This potentially places banks and other financial institutions operating in the Sunshine State between a rock and a hard place. They’re required by federal law to implement U.S. criminal and national security policies — including stringent background checks — but in doing so, they risk breaching Florida’s broad-based anti-discrimination law.