The legal battle between Fort Lauderdale and state officials over a recent crackdown on street art may conclude in May, when both parties may have a one-day final hearing.
The crackdown began in August 2025 under Governor Ron DeSantis, with roughly 100 public artworks across Florida slated for removal under his Safe Streets program in collaboration with the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT).
The directive reportedly stems from an FDOT memo prohibiting painted pavement featuring “social, political or ideological messages”—itself issued following guidance from U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who said last July that “roads are for safety, not political messages or artwork.” Cities that oppose the removal risk losing millions of dollars in state and federal transportation funding.
Critics of the program have framed it as a veiled attempt to scrub LGBTQ history from public view, as the majority of artworks deemed in violation of the directive are overwhelmingly Pride-themed. Approximately nine Florida cities launched legal challenges in response, largely to no avail; in August, Orlando’s rainbow crosswalk honoring the 49 victims of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting was removed overnight. Three months later, on October 8, Miami Beach voluntarily dismissed its petition challenging the directive to remove its street art.
A memo written by Fort Lauderdale Interim City Attorney D’Wayne Spence and published in part by the South Florida Sun Sentinel reads: “The city of Fort Lauderdale’s petition is now, to my knowledge, the sole challenge to the rule before the Division of Administrative Hearings (DOAH).”
Fort Lauderdale Commissioner Steve Glassman told the Sentinel, “We are the last man standing. This is an issue where you have to stand up for yourself. If we don’t stand up now, when do we stand up?”
The legal dispute over Safe Streets unfolds amid an escalating nationwide ideological overhaul of arts, culture, and education, spearheaded by the Trump administration. Earlier this month, one of Texas’s leading universities—the University of North Texas (UNT)—became embroiled in a censorship controversy after administrators abruptly shuttered an exhibition featuring anti-ICE messages at its College of Visual Arts and Design.
In a leaked transcript of a faculty meeting, UNT Dean Karen Hutzel described the decision as an “institutional directive” and warned that the college could become a target of elected officials with the power to allocate—or withhold—state funding, as has recently been seen at the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University.
“Some of the pieces included what’s deemed as anti-ICE messaging,” Hutzel said. “And so … that topic itself has entered a different space, and so it was that aspect of it that the university leadership became very concerned about … the political and public response [and] scrutiny across the spectrum.”
