Supreme risk to Florida with Barbara Lagoa on the high court

Nominating Barbara Lagoa to the Supreme Court could clinch Florida for President Trump. Or so the thinking goes.

But what would a Justice Lagoa do for, or to, Florida?

State Republicans hope that Trump will choose Lagoa to succeed Ruth Bader Ginsburg. They like the optics.

Lagoa is the daughter of Cuban exiles. She served on the Third District Court of Appeal, based in Miami, from 2006 until January 2019. Gov. DeSantis promoted her to the Florida Supreme Court, where she lasted less than a year until Trump elevated her to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Her nomination could help Trump with the most conservative Cuban-American voters. Republicans no doubt remember that Barack Obama won a majority of that bloc in 2012, becoming the first Democrat to do so.

Beyond short-term politics, however, the key point is that Trump wants a very conservative justice. He likes a Cuban-American woman at the moment because he’s doing badly among female voters and needs to win Florida. He had two chances to pick a woman and went with a white man.

If Lagoa had the same demographic profile but a different philosophy, she would have no shot. Based on her comments, Lagoa believes that courts should defer to legislatures even if they act unconstitutionally. Her narrow, exclusive thinking showed itself when the Florida Supreme Court considered ex-felons’ rights restoration.

To review, 65% of voters in 2018 wanted rights restoration automatic for most ex-felons when they completed their sentences. They approved Amendment 4 to do so. This cause unites conservatives and liberals.

But Republicans in Tallahassee, channeling their inner Jim Crow, passed implementing legislation that added payment of fines and restitution as a condition of restoration. Several groups challenged the legislation.

Lagoa didn’t just show sympathy for the Republican position. She wondered aloud whether the court should strike down the amendment. A lawyer for the plaintiffs noted that not even the state had asked for that.

Florida ranks near the bottom in terms of rights restoration. That shameful status hurts the state because it denies people their best chance at new lives. Former Gov. Jeb Bush’s criminal justice task force recommended speedier restoration.

Florida also ranks near the bottom on the rate of residents with health insurance. Here again, Lagoa could deliver for Trump but do great damage to Florida.

One week after the November election, the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in the challenge to the Affordable Care Act. Despite Trump’s professed desire to protect people with preexisting conditions, he supports that challenge, which would strip those protections.

Legal scholars across the spectrum have mocked the argument for overturning the whole law because Republicans in 2017 abolished the individual mandate. In Lagoa, though, Trump might get the deciding vote to strip health care coverage from 20 million people — safely after the nation votes.

No state has more people with coverage under the law than Florida — nearly two million. Neither Trump nor Florida Republicans have offered a credible alternative. Stripping that coverage during a pandemic would confirm the description of Trump by former Mike Pence aide Olivia Troye: “flatout disregard for human life.”

Finally, Lagoa likely would uphold Trump’s gutting of environmental regulations. Florida has had to endure 10 years of Republican climate change denial, through Rick Scott’s time as governor and Trump’s as president.

Hurricane Sally soaked up enough moisture from the steaming Gulf of Mexico to drench the Panhandle. In 2018, Hurricane Michael intensified from Category 2 to Category 5 in 24 hours and became the strongest storm to hit the Panhandle.

Warming seas make Florida more of a punching bag for hurricanes. Yet Trump calls climate change a hoax. The Panhandle has reliably backed Trump. Talk about voting against your own interests.

Trump surely is thrilled to have a diversion from COVID-19, which he once claimed would kill 50,000 Americans at most. We’re at 200,000 and rising, with about 4% of the world’s population and about 20% of COVID-19 deaths.

Lagoa is a chance to change the subject. Nothing more. Trump doesn’t truly care about the state he now calls home. He cares about its votes.