DeSantis’ court pick hits snag
Florida Supreme Court allows lawmaker’s challenge
Striking a blow to Gov. Ron DeSantis, a unanimous Florida Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed state Rep. Geraldine Thompson to continue challenging the governor’s appointment of Palm Beach
Circuit Judge Renatha Francis to the state’s highest court.
The court gave DeSantis until Wednesday to explain why he shouldn’t appoint someone other than Francis out of the list of seven other approved nominees.
Thompson, D-Windermere, said Tuesday the order is “very promising.”
“The governor will have to articulate why none of the others who are on that list would be qualified for appointment, given that his appointee is ineligible because she does not meet the constitutional requirement,” Thompson said.
The Supreme Court had initially ruled on Aug. 27 that DeSantis exceeded his authority when he appointed Francis to the state Supreme Court, even though she didn’t meet the legal requirements because she was not a member of the Florida Bar for 10 years.
But the court had also decided that Francis’ appointment would stand because Thompson’s solution, certifying an entirely new slate of nominees, couldn’t be done.
Thompson asked the court to reconsider, and on Tuesday the court granted her request to revise her complaint.
Now, she can immediately ask DeSantis to choose someone else out of the seven other nominees on the already approved slate,
and he would have to explain why that was an unreasonable request.
“We believe that the interests of justice favor allowing Thompson to amend her petition,” Chief Justice Charles Canady and Justices Ricky Polston, Jorge Labarga, Alan Lawson and Carlos Muñiz wrote in a seven-page order. Justice John Couriel, whom DeSantis also appointed in May, has recused himself from the dispute over Francis.
The governor has until Wednesday “to show cause why he should not be required immediately to fill the vacancy in the office of justice of the Supreme Court by appointing a candidate who was on the JNC’s certified list of Jan. 23, 2020, and is now to constitutionally eligible for appointment.”
“I think this all speaks to the independence of the judiciary,” Thompson said. “All Floridians need to feel that if they have a case that goes before the Florida Supreme Court, there are judges on the court who are going to act based on the law and not based on a political agenda or some ideology.”
The order was a rebuke to the governor, whose lawyers on Friday argued in a court document that Thompson’s “efforts amount to no more than an impermissible attempt at a second bite of the apple.”
DeSantis’ lawyers argued in part that Thompson should not be allowed to amend her petition, referring to a rule of judicial procedure about amending legal challenges.
The rule “is not meant to provide litigants like petitioner with an opportunity to reopen and refashion their initial pleadings after a decision on the merits,” the governor’s attorneys wrote.
But the Supreme Court justices on Tuesday picked apart DeSantis’ arguments, calling them “unpersuasive.”
The governor’s office did not return a request for comment.
The dispute stems from DeSantis’ decisions in May to appoint Francis and Couriel to fill vacancies created when former Justices Barbara Lagoa and Robert Luck were named to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Couriel joined the Supreme Court immediately, but DeSantis said Francis would become a justice on Sept. 24, when she would meet the10-year Bar membership requirement.
Francis was born in Jamaica and would be the first non-Cuban person of Caribbean heritage to serve on the Supreme Court, DeSantis said when he announced the appointments. She also would be the first Black justice since Peggy Quince retired early last year and would be the only woman on the court.
In her original challenge, Thompson, who is Black, argued that the nominating commission should provide a new list of people to DeSantis and asked that the JNC “strongly consider including for consideration the six fully qualified African-American candidates who applied for the vacancies in this case.” Francis was the only Black applicant on the list of nominees sent to DeSantis.
Also on Tuesday, a Fernandina Beach resident asked the Supreme Court to block Francis’ appointment as well. The petition was filed by an attorney for Robert Burch, identified as a former attorney who served in the Ohio Senate.
As for what she expects DeSantis’ response to be, “I’m baffled as to what he might say,” Thompson said.