Scott must abandon court-stacking plan.

Term-limited Gov. Rick Scott won’t be moving out of the governor’s mansion for another 13 months, but he’s already pushing Florida toward a constitutional crisis on his last day as chief executive.

Earlier this month, a state Supreme Court majority turned aside a bid by two government watchdog groups to head off the crisis. Now only Scott can steer the state clear of a legal quagmire as he leaves office.

Scott has vowed to appoint successors to three retiring Supreme Court justices whose terms expire on the same day as his in January 2019. But an advisory opinion from the high court in 2006 concluded the power to fill vacancies under these circumstances rests with the incoming governor, not the outgoing one.

In a tacit concession that the court’s reasoning in 2006 was sound, Scott’s supporters in the Florida Legislature tried to countermand the advisory opinion in 2014 with a proposed constitutional amendment. The amendment would have handed the power to replace retiring justices and appellate judges to the outgoing governor. Voters didn’t come close to buying it; the proposal fell 12 percentage points short of passage.

But Scott is acting like that vote never took place. In December 2016, when he elevated Judge Alan Lawson to the high court to succeed retiring Justice James E.C. Perry, the governor declared he would name successors to three other justices — Fred Lewis, Barbara Pariente and Peggy Quince — whose terms, due to the state’s mandatory retirement age for judges, end when his does.

The two watchdog groups, the League of Women Voters and Common Cause, filed a petition with the Supreme Court to block the governor’s plan. This month six of the court’s seven justices rejected the petition, arguing they couldn’t rule against an action before it took place. But as Lewis, the lone dissenter, lamented, “Under the majority view, elected politicians can announce their intentions and plan to engage in all types of illegal and harmful conduct but no relief is available until the illegal and harmful act has already inflicted its damage.”

Critics of the two watchdogs saw partisan motives behind their legal effort. But it’s quite possible that the governor who succeeds Scott also will be a Republican. Regardless, precedents established by governors of one party can be exploited by future governors of another. Someday a Democratic chief executive in Florida, citing Scott’s example, could claim the right to appoint justices and appellate judges in the final hours of his or her term.

Some defenders of Scott’s judicial power play have mocked opponents for taking the same position as U.S. Senate Republicans who refused to consider former President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court. Nonsense. Obama nominated Garland 10 before the end of his second term as president to fill a vacancy following the sudden death of Justice Antonin Scalia a month earlier. Scott is planning to replace three retiring justices immediately after their terms end on his final day in office.

The last time this situation arose in Florida, as the end of former Democratic Gov. Lawton Chiles’ term approached, he and incoming Republican Gov. Jeb Bush avoided a constitutional crisis by agreeing that Quince would fill a vacancy created by a retirement on the high court. It doesn’t speak well for Scott that he has not signaled any intention to consider this kind of a compromise.

Scott, who is expected to ask voters next year to elect him to the U.S. Senate, would strengthen his case for their support if he demonstrated the proper respect for their opinion.

The governor has vowed to replace three retiring Supreme Court justices on his last day in office.

An advisory opinion and a 2014 vote argue for Scott to abandon his plan and avoid a constitutional crisis.