In Steven Meyers, nature has a lawyer who’s ready to fight
Most people look at a raccoon and think “Cute.” Or maybe “Does that raccoon have rabies?”
Steve Meyers might look at that same raccoon and wonder “Is that a potential client?”
The same goes for black bears and opossums. And rivers, lakes and wetlands.
Does it matter that animals and water bodies don’t have the cash to hire attorneys? Not to Meyers. When the Orlando attorney sees Central Florida’s natural treasures under threat, his brain immediately goes to work, looking for ways to use the law for their salvation.
“We are on the environmental Titanic. We are losing our natural world,” says the 61-year-old Central Florida native. “Our waterways are crashing. Ecosystems are not sustainable. If we don’t save it now, we lose the chance forever.”
And if the right law doesn’t exist? He’ll help write it — as he did with the groundbreaking 2020
Orange County charter amendment that conveyed a right to local water bodies to
be free-flowing and healthy, protected from pollution. Then he’ll go to court to fight for it.
Other people share Meyers’ passion for defending ecological underdogs, as evidenced by the torrent of anguished protest that greeted 2015 s sanctioned hunt of black bears. And certainly, Florida has had its share of great legal minds — people who could stand at the boundaries of the law and see possibilities no one else could perceive.
But Meyers is a rare combination of both. And that is why he is among this year’s finalists for Central
Floridian of the Year.
Orange County stands up for nature
If Meyers’ story sounds a bit familiar, it’s because he was nominated by Chuck O’Neal, a 2020 Central Floridian of the Year finalist. O’Neal heads an advocacy group, Speak Up Wekiva, that fights developments and decisions that put the natural world in peril. And while you may not recognize that group either, you almost certainly recognize (and probably voted for)
their biggest victory to date: That 2020 charter amendment, known in Orange County as the “clean water” amendment.
On its face, the Orange County amendment is clearly one of the biggest environmental coups in Florida’s history. It is the first of its kind to grant “rights” to water bodies — the right to be clean of pollution, the right to keep wetlands intact and streams flowing free. It also gave private citizens the right to sue.
It passed with a jaw-dropping 89 percent of the vote. And many people say that without Meyers’ creative thinking, enthusiasm and legal expertise, the Orange County Charter Review Commission never would have put it on the ballot.
“He’s really a brilliant legal mind,” says Nicole Wilson, an environmental-law attorney who was a member of the charter board — and won election to the Orange County Commission in the same 2020 election that saw the clean-water amendment approved. “The way we moved jurisprudence forward with this … it was because he said ‘You know, I think we can come at this from a different angle.’ ”
The victory was clouded from the start, however — four months before voters went to the polls, the Legislature created a new law that prohibited counties from adopting any provision that granted rights to natural systems.
Knowing it would be an uphill battle, Meyers and others picked a planned development of nearly 2,000 acres near Lake Nona as the spot to make their stand. According to its own application, the proposed Meridian Parks Remainder project would destroy 112 acres of wetlands, including some that are critical to the health of nearby water bodies.
When Meyers filed his suit, he named five nearby water bodies as plaintiffs: Crosby Island Marsh, Lake Hart, Lake Mary Jane, Boggy Branch and Wilde Cypress Branch. All of them would be affected or partially destroyed by the proposed development.
But Meyers didn’t just go after the development. He also included the audacious argument that the Florida Legislature violated the state constitution and attacked the “fundamental rights” of Orange County voters when they passed the law that would block the clean-water amendment.
That argument pushes the stakes even higher — and if the lawsuit prevails, it could benefit voters in all 67 counties because it would keep the Legislature from overriding them, Meyers says.
“We’re sick of seeing the will of the people ignored,” he says.
Not his first fight
The Orange County suit isn’t the first time Meyers has gone to bat for the environment. In his nomination letter, O’Neal said he first met Meyers in 2015 when the group filed a legal challenge to Florida’s highly controversial black bear hunt. Meyers sent the group a $1,000 check and a note that offered something far more valuable — help with litigation. “Within two weeks, Steve was driving up to Tallahassee to represent (pro bono) Florida’s black bear population at a hearing on an emergency motion for a temporary injunction to stop the bear hunt,” O’Neal says.
They lost that lawsuit, though the state agreed to call a halt to the hunt if the bear population suffered significant harm. Meyers says that promise wasn’t kept. “We lost 40 percent of the bears in Seminole County,” he says.
In 2017, Meyers filed suit (again, on behalf of Speak Up Wekiva) against the Orange County Commission and a planned development known as Princeton Oaks. They lost at the trial level, appealed and lost again.
Yes, there’s a theme here — and it’s one Meyers has learned to live with. He knows, ahead of time, that he’ll lose a good number of the cases he files. That’s because lawmakers and local officials make sure the deck is stacked in favor of big-money developers, he says, and against the natural systems that so many Floridians hold dear. And when he goes to court to fight for environmental causes — without pay — he knows he’ll be outmanned by brigades of high-dollar lawyers working for developers.
Still, it’s a fight he won’t surrender. In fact, he, O’Neal and other environmental advocates are already planning the next line of attack: A 2024 statewide ballot question that enshrines “rights of nature” into the Florida Constitution.
“We are not going to back down,” Meyers says. “We’re sick of the people being ignored. … we are destroying this state so a handful of people can profit.”