Governor may be forced to obey law
Maxwell: DeSantis violated state Constitution with appointment.
Earlier this year, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced he was nominating an unqualified judge for the Florida Supreme Court.
And when I say this judge was unqualified, I don’t mean she was unqualified in my opinion. Or unqualified according to some critics.
I mean she was unqualified according to the Florida Constitution.
South Florida Circuit Court Judge Renatha Francis literally hadn’t been a state-certified lawyer long enough to legally apply for a seat on the highest court in Florida.
Normally such a thing would be an impediment. But Florida isn’t a normal state.
DeSantis decided the rules didn’t apply to him and nominated Francis anyway.
And the governor’s plans to bulldoze right through the constitution he swore to uphold were chugging along until State Rep. Geraldine Thompson, D-Windermere, challenged the appointment — and the Florida Supreme Court ruled Thompson was right.
The conservative court didn’t mince words either, decreeing: “The Governor did exceed his authority in making this appointment.”
Sounds simple enough, right? The governor did wrong. So obviously the court struck down his improper nomination, right?
Well, not quite. While the justices ruled DeSantis hadn’t followed the rules, they weren’t quite sure how or if he should make amends. So, at first, they didn’t order him to do anything.
It was the verdict equivalent of a shrug emoji.
But there was a twist in the
case this week when the Supreme Court gave new life to Thompson’s complaint, asking her to suggest a way for DeSantis to choose a new judge.
Suddenly it looked like DeSantis might have to follow the rules … so he promptly freaked out.
DeSantis staged a press conference Wednesday down in Miramar, where a roomful of South Floridians rallied around their beloved South Florida judge and tried to pressure Thompson to drop her lawsuit.
DeSantis and Francis’ friends didn’t spend much time trying to argue that she met the constitutional qualifications to serve. (They couldn’t. She was several months shy of the 10 required years of Florida Bar membership when nominated.)
Instead, they said that Francis, a Jamaican immigrant, had a compelling life story and stressed that she was a devoted mother, a woman of faith and a former small-business owner.
But as much as anything, this crowd of Francis supporters — many of them Black and Democratic — argued that Francis’ unconstitutional appointment would bring needed diversity to a court that currently has no Black justices.
Without Francis, there might be no Black justices, they claimed.
That argument sets Thompson’s hair on fire — the suggestion that the only Black applicant suitable for appointment is an unqualified one.
Of course, Thompson wants diversity on the bench. She has been fighting for equality her entire life, and has long championed the appointment of qualified Black justices,
noting many have applied.
The problem appears to be that none of those qualified applicants struck DeSantis’ fancy quite like Francis, who is a member of the Federalist Society — a conservative legal group that DeSantis has frequently turned to for appointments.
DeSantis wasn’t looking for qualified appointees. He wanted ideological ones.
He has openly said as much, vowing in front of Republican crowds to appoint judges who will rule against Democratic plaintiffs and defendants. (See last year’s piece from Florida Politics: “Ron DeSantis promises new Supreme Court won’t side so often with Democrats.”)
DeSantis has been quite candid about this in the past. Yet on Wednesday, DeSantis asked: “Do we need everything to devolve into party and partisan differences?”
You have to wonder if he was talking to himself.
This week, DeSantis tried to recast his partisan
desires as altruistic ones, saying he simply wants judges who believe in “fidelity to the constitution.”
The irony was rich; Florida’s governor professing passion for a constitution that a court full of conservative judges said he had just violated.
Perhaps sensing that his hypocrisy was showing, DeSantis decided to attack Thompson in more personal ways, claiming she was the hypocrite. Why? Because she was opposing his black nominee after arguing for more diversity on the court.
Keep in mind: DeSantis had multiple opportunities to nominate Black justices before … and took none of them. Yet now he wanted to claim he was the Martin Luther King Jr. of judicial activism and that Thompson — a 71-year-old Black woman who has crusaded for civil rights her whole life — was the enemy of diversity. That takes gall.
For her part, Thompson kept her poise when I spoke to her after DeSantis
had arranged a stage show that basically attempted to brand her as an enemy of Black empowerment.
She said Florida is full of qualified Black judges — including several appointed by conservatives such as Jeb Bush — who had applied and were ready to serve, noting that DeSantis essentially controls the nominating committee that selects the finalists.
Thompson wasn’t going to indulge DeSantis’ racebaiting comments about her. She just wanted him to follow the rules.
Listen, there’s no denying DeSantis gets to pick his Supreme Court justices. And he’s obviously free to select judges with ideals and agendas as conservative as he wants.
The only thing Thompson wants is for him to follow the laws and abide by the constitution he took an oath to uphold.
That doesn’t seem like too much to ask.