Florida settles lawsuit over covid data

State must pay DeSantis critic’s legal fees, post detailed information for 3 years

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — After a two-year court battle over the DeSantis administration’s refusal to produce covid-related public records during the height of the pandemic, the state will begin releasing specific data again for the next three years and pay all legal fees.

Under the agreement, the Florida Department of Health will pay $152,250 toward former Orlando state Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith’s legal fees and cover its own legal costs. It also will have to post detailed covid-19 data on its website for the next 36 months, including vaccination counts, case counts and deaths, aggregated weekly, by county, age group, gender and race.

“The DeSantis administration has repeatedly tried to weaken the state’s public records law, hide information from the public and they have finally been held accountable,” said Smith, one of the administration’s most vocal critics of its handling of the pandemic.

He lost reelection in 2022, and is running for state Senate in 2024.

The Department of Health and Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo admitted no wrongdoing, but the settlement agreement speaks for itself, Smith said.

“The DeSantis administration settled in our favor because they knew what they did was wrong,” Smith said. “They gave their biggest, most vocal critic a huge victory. They couldn’t have handed us this victory if they weren’t guilty.”

The governor’s office referred all questions and requests for comments to the Department of Health, which did not immediately respond.

Smith filed his lawsuit in Leon County Circuit Court after the DOH refused to release covid-19 data during the Delta surge of the pandemic in 2021, when Florida led covid deaths in the nation at 23,000. The Florida Center for Government Accountability aided him in his lawsuit, which was joined by the state’s leading media outlets, including the South Florida Sun Sentinel, Miami Herald and others.

As of Sept. 28, the DOH biweekly report shows 91,178 deaths attributed to covid-19, and 7.8 million infected, with more than 16 million vaccinated.

For most of the pandemic, the department posted detailed daily data showing case numbers, hospitalizations, deaths and other information by county.

But DeSantis restricted access to covid data after he had fully reopened the state in June 2021 and the infection rate was at a low of 5%.

That infection rate quickly changed when the Delta variant hit Florida that summer.

Smith filed a request on July 23, 2021 for covid-19 daily case numbers, positivity rates, hospitalizations, deaths and vaccinations for Orange County, saying the public needed to know this information to make informed decisions about sending their children to school.

“The public not only has a right to those public records, also to receive critical public health information in order to make decisions impacting the health of their families,” Smith said.

But a DOH spokeswoman cited state law exempting epidemiological research from public records laws.

The FLGCA made the same public records request as Smith and was given the same reason for denying those records.

“The DeSantis administration has withheld data during the worst surge of the pandemic, restricted information and downplayed the severity of the outbreak to feed their politician[’s] narrative and help DeSantis run for president,” Smith said.

DeSantis also rejected government mandates to require masks or proof of vaccination and pushed a narrative that residents had the ultimate say over whether they should wear masks in public or get vaccinated.

During the court hearings, the DOH claimed that the records Smith and the FLGCA requested didn’t exist, said Michael Barfield, spokesperson for the FLGCA.

But the records were produced in March after the appellate court upheld the trial court’s order requiring the Department to produce a corporate representative for deposition, Barfield said.

“The Department hid public records during the height of the pandemic to fit a political narrative that Florida was open for business,” Barfield said. “Transparency and accountability are not negotiable. The Constitution mandates it.”

Barfield said the FLGCA will continue to monitor the DOH’s compliance with the settlement agreement.