Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Black Dems back DeSantis
Several rally around governor as he attempts to save his pick for Florida Supreme Court
An indignant Gov. Ron DeSantis rallied support for his controversial pick for the Florida Supreme Court as he portrayed himself as a champion of women, immigrants and Black citizens — and sought to drive a political wedge into a vital component of the Democratic Party.
The Republican governor was joined by some of Broward’s most prominent Black elected officials — including county Mayor Dale Holness, Lauderdale Lakes Mayor Hazelle Rogers and Miramar Mayor Wayne Messam, all Democrats.
The immediate issue is DeSantis’ appointment of Renatha Francis, currently a circuit court judge in Palm Beach County, to fill a vacancy on the Florida Supreme Court.
Born in Jamaica, Francis would be the first CaribbeanAmerican justice and the first Black justice since early 2019.
The wrinkle with the appointment is when DeSantis appointed Francis in May, she hadn’t been a member of the Bar for 10 years — a requirement set by the state Constitution. To get around that rule, she and DeSantis planned to have her wait until she met the 10-year threshold on Sept. 24.
DeSantis said Wednesday the gap of a few months until Francis hits the 10-year mark isn’t significant. “It was not anything that I viewed as negative at all. Sometimes you’ve got to wait a little bit longer for good things to happen.”
A legal objection was brought by state Rep. Geraldine Thompson of Orange County, a longtime Democratic member of the state Legislature. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court gave DeSantis one day to explain why he shouldn’t appoint someone other than Francis out of the list of seven other eligible nominees.
DeSantis responded in the po
litical arena. On Wednesday he brought together political and legal leaders at Miramar City Hall, a city with a large Caribbean-American population, to press the case for Francis. The nominee also participated.
“Rather than celebrate this great achievement, we’re facing a politically motivated lawsuit attempting to prevent Judge Francis from assuming office,” DeSantis said. “I think this lawsuit [seeking to block the appointment] is so misguided. Quite frankly it’s an insult to the Jamaican American community and the broader Caribbean American community here in South Florida.”
It’s unclear what happens next. Both DeSantis and Francis left the Miramar event without answering reporters’ questions. “Her selection, when she eventually takes office, will be very inspirational for a lot of people,” DeSantis said.
Politics
The dispute could have broader political considerations beyond the makeup of the Supreme Court.
Thompson is Black, and the Black Caucus in the Legislature is fractured over the issue. State Rep. Dotie Joseph, a Miami Dade County Democrat, said at the Miramar event she wanted to direct a message to Thompson “as one Black woman to another,” adding, “I ask for mercy” for Francis. Joseph said Thompson should drop the case. Holness said it was “foolhardy” for Thompson to continue pressing her case, because it would mean no Black justice on the court.
And DeSantis’ move could cause fissures among Black voters, a key Democratic Party constituency.
Black voters overwhelmingly support Democrats in major elections. But the African American and Caribbean American communities aren’t monolithic, and Republican politicians in Florida have long sought to make inroads with people of Caribbean heritage, hoping to chip away at some Black support for Democrats.
There was politics at work in the initial appointment. DeSantis was under pressure to appoint a Black justice. The retirement of Justice Peggy Quince in January 2019 marked the first time in 40 years that the Florida Supreme Court didn’t have a Black justice.
Qualifications
Francis received her bachelor’s degree from the University of the West Indies in 2000 and immigrated to Florida as an adult. In Jamaica, Francis operated a bar and trucking company while attending college in Kingston and caring for a much younger sibling. She earned her law degree from Florida Coastal School of Law in 2010.
Growing up, DeSantis said, “few would have predicted she would be where she is today. That’s part of what makes America unique … No one would have said when she was 16 or 20 in Jamaica you probably would be on the Supreme Court in your 40s.”
Francis said her story is a “testament to just how great this country is.” She described herself as a Black immigrant woman from working-class roots who was able to get to this point in her career with “no hand outs, no hand ups, just navigating through a system that was completely alien to me.”
None of the other candidates on the list of potential nominees from the Judicial Nominating Commission is Black. So if Thompson prevails, and DeSantis has to pick another person from the list, there won’t be a Black justice.
Holness said Francis is “very well qualified, minus the technicality that they want to use. And that technicality is a matter of days.”
Eugene Pettis, a prominent Fort Lauderdale lawyer and former president of the Florida Bar, said the state needs a diverse Supreme Court, including a Black justice. “Each of their deliberations on the cases will be enriched by having a perspective that’s different from their own.” Pettis, the only Black lawyer who has ever led the Bar, said he sees “harm to the state by allowing us to have a Supreme Court at this day in time that’s so homogeneous in its composition and not reflective of who we are as a state.”
Thompson, the Central Florida state representative who challenged the nomination, said qualifications and experience, not race, is the issue.
“I remember growing up in this country where jobs would be advertised and there would be a note in bold, ‘Blacks need not apply.’ And I would always think ‘what about qualifications, what about preparedness, what about experience?’ I always thought that those things were paramount and you should not look at a person just based on color. I still feel that way,” she said. “And what we’re talking about here is just color. Ineligible, inexperienced, unprepared. And as far as I’m concerned those things in my mind outweigh color.”
Remaking court
Pettis said DeSantis has the right to make Supreme Court picks. “There are consequences to elections, and the election was held back in 2018. Governor DeSantis won. As part of this election win he gets to appoint the judges.
Moving the Florida Supreme Court to the right was one of the most significant changes DeSantis promised when he was running for governor in 2018. He told supporters that he hoped to alter the judiciary in Florida “for a generation” through the three vacancies.
DeSantis also said during the campaign that he would “appoint solid ‘constitutionalists’ to the state Supreme Court and I think that will make a big difference. I think we’ll really reenergize our constitutional order here by doing that.”
Three justices reached mandatory retirement as DeSantis took office, giving him an unusual opportunity to do what he promised. Two of those initial three appointees to the Florida Supreme Court were so acceptable to conservatives that they were plucked from the Florida Supreme Court by President Donald Trump and are now on the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of appeals.
Two of those first three — federal Appeals Court Judge Barbara Lagoa and state Supreme Court Judge Carlos G. Muñiz — are on the list of potential candidates President Donald Trump said Wednesday he’d use if he gets to nominate another justice to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Conservative question
Although Holness told reporters Francis is a moderate, she has the credential that counts most for judicial appointments by Republicans: membership in the ultra-conservative Federalist Society legal organization. Joseph said that isn’t a reason to oppose the appointment. “She may be conservative and a member of the Federalist Society; none of those things in and of themselves disqualify Judge Francis.”
DeSantis promised as a candidate to appoint state Supreme Court justices in the mold of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Joseph said Francis would not turn out to be a justice who favors rolling back civil rights and affirmative action protections. “She is not a Clarence Thomas,” Joseph said.
Thompson said there’s no way for anyone to know that. “She has no body of work that you can examine to determine that that’s the case. That’s part of the problem. She’s been a judge for scarcely three years. Where is her body of work that allows Representative Joseph to make that assessment? I’ve not been able to see that, and therefore I can’t put my confidence in the fact that that’s where she’s going to be because I don’t know where she’s been.”