Another appeals court district is another Florida boondoggle

With five district courts of appeal that appear to be efficient, Florida does not need another at considerable burden to the taxpayers.

But that’s what the Florida Supreme Court is proposing to the Legislature on the questionable premise that it would increase public confidence in those appeals courts.

It’s a boondoggle entailing another $50 million courthouse and ongoing salary and staff expenses of at least $1 million a year, plus endless complications for lawyers and an invitation to Gov. Ron DeSantis to put six more conservative allies on the appellate bench.

If public confidence is indeed flagging, as the court supposes, it’s because of blatantly political appointments by DeSantis and his predecessor, Rick Scott. The sixth-district plan does nothing to fix that.

Stripped of that pretext, it’s about politics too. There are footprints.

In April, the Legislature settled a power struggle over a new $50 million courthouse for the Second District Court of Appeal (DCA) by deciding to build it in Pinellas County rather than in Lakeland, the home town of Senate Appropriations Chair Kelli Stargel. House Speaker Chris Sprowls, R-Palm Harbor, wanted it for his home county of Pinellas. He had the greater clout.

In an obvious nod to Stargel, however, Sprowls called it “step one in a multiyear plan to address the unique needs” of the 14 counties in the second district’s jurisdiction.

A month later, the Supreme Court appointed a 15-member commission to “evaluate the necessity” for making changes to the appellate districts. With only seven members concurring in the specifics, the committee recommended a reorganization that, among other things, carves a sixth district out of the second.

It may be pertinent that Chief Justice Charles Canady resides in Lakeland, where his wife, Jennifer Canady, is running for the Legislature. The potential conflicts of interest are an issue for another day.

There was a strong dissent to the reorganization signed by four of the five DCA judges on the 15-member panel and the one public defender. The statistics the committee gathered showed that none of the five districts is overworked. In fact, virtually all caseloads have been declining since 201516, before the pandemic, and 96% of the criminal appeals and 93.6% of civil cases are concluded within 180 days of oral argument.

The Supreme Court approved the plan last week over the dissent of Justice Ricky Polston, who noted that the five chief judges in the districts oppose it and more than two-thirds of all the district judges had told the committee it would do nothing for any measure of performance or public trust and confidence.

Below the appellate level, the committee proposal also calls for moving the Fourth Judicial Circuit (Duval, Nassau and Clay counties) out of the First DCA into the Fifth and moving the Ninth Circuit (Orange and Osceola counties) into the Second District.

The new Sixth DCA would consist of these trial circuits: The Sixth (Pinellas and Pasco), the Twelfth (Manatee, DeSoto and Sarasota) and Thirteenth (Hillsborough).

That still leaves the Second District in need of a new home.

Its mold-infested courthouse in Lakeland has been unusable since 2016. Its rented quarters at Tampa would no longer be in the district. It would also need one new judge, along with five for the enlarged Fifth District.

That obviously portends a new Lakeland courthouse for Stargel and no more commuting for her husband, John K. Stargel, whom Gov. DeSantis appointed to the court last year.

The Supreme Court’s order cites “the serious underrepresentation” of First District judges from the Jacksonville area, which provides 29% of the district court’s workload and 37.5% of the population but only two out of 15 judges. But moving the Jacksonville area into another district doesn’t guarantee that it will be better represented.

The real problem at the First District — unmentioned in the order — is that a succession of governors and their nominating commissions have packed its bench with Tallahassee insiders. Justice Polston accurately attributed the dearth of judges from Jacksonville to “the governor’s selection, not the inability to attract well-qualified applicants.”

A closely related issue is the near-disappearance of Black and Hispanic judges from the appellate bench at Tallahassee and statewide. According to the study committee’s own findings, all but eight of the 64 sitting district court judges are white.

The district courts are the courts of last resort for most other appeals from trial courts. Their precedents are binding within their districts unless the Supreme Court accepts a case to reconcile conflicting precedents.

Creating a sixth district also means that the next Supreme Court justice would have to come from that area. That’s because of a quirky residency requirement that rural legislators exacted in 1976, when all appellate judgeships became appointed rather than elected.

An unsettled question is what would happen to the 13 Second District judges who live in what would become the Sixth District. They include some relatively liberal judges who had been appointed by earlier governors. Few remain statewide. In some quarters, the reorganization is suspected of an intent to make the Second District more conservative.

The Constitution requires Florida judges to live in their jurisdictions. In the past, the Legislature has transferred sitting judges to new districts, as the Supreme Court appears to be encouraging in this instance.

The last appellate district, the Fifth, was created in 1979. In calling now for another, the Supreme Court acknowledged that it “would be accompanied by some degree of internal disruption” but that it would be “short-lived and … outweighed by the benefit of enhanced public trust and confidence.”

It’s a stretch to imagine public confidence in such a political stew.

The Legislature should reject the reorganization. That is asking much of the rank and file, given the political influence at work. But if they approve it, they should be prepared to explain why so-called conservatives can be rolled by such an unnecessary and expensive boondoggle.