Court consolidation clouded by political motivations | Editorial
When politicians talk of consolidating government operations to improve “efficiencies” or “uniformity,” watch out — especially when it involves a separate, coequal branch of government.
Those buzzwords can be code language for another backroom power play by Gov. Ron DeSantis and his allies. DeSantis already dominates a severely weakened Legislature, and he has packed the courts with like-minded, conservative followers of the Federalist Society who will shape the state’s future long after he’s gone.
DeSantis also has suspended two elected Democratic state attorneys, Andrew Warren in Tampa and Monique Worrell in Orlando. He doesn’t control the other state attorneys — at least not yet — but a consolidation study could reshape the justice system so it hews more closely to the governor’s agenda.
At the urging of House Speaker Paul Renner, R-Palm Coast, a DeSantis ally, the Supreme Court created a Judicial Circuit Assessment Committee to study possible consolidation of Florida’s 20 judicial circuits, each of which now serves from one to seven counties.
Each circuit has its own trial courts, where circuit judges face voters every six years, plus elected state attorneys and public defenders chosen by voters in partisan elections every four years. Their next elections are next year.
A long-overdue review
The current alignment of judicial circuits has existed since 1969. Florida’s population has tripled since then to more than 22 million. If anything, the massive growth in Florida, and the lengthy case backlogs in urban centers, would argue in favor of more judicial circuits, not fewer.
We agree that after 54 years, a thorough study of the justice system’s structure is long overdue — as long as the driving motivation is equal justice under law, not a political agenda.
Another reason to be wary of this venture is that it comes from the same Legislature that decided two years ago that Florida needed another appellate court. At great expense, lawmakers created a Sixth District Court of Appeal, which we said was a $50 million boondoggle mainly to create more judges for DeSantis to appoint.
The consolidation study’s potential for mischief is limitless. One easy-to-imagine shift is a breakup of the Ninth Judicial Circuit, now comprised of two strongly Democratic counties, Orange and Osceola, both of which are dominated by a tourist economy, and where voters have consistently chosen liberal public defenders and prosecutors, including the recently suspended Worrell.
The state could merge Orange with a more conservative county such as Polk to the west or Brevard to the east, and greatly improve Republican chances of winning those two elected posts. This would result in gerrymandered justice, which is illegal when it’s done to redraw political boundaries for Congress and the Legislature.
Leave the Keys alone
Four circuits are comprised of one county each. They are the “big three” counties of Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach, and the fourth is Monroe in the Keys. An obvious consolidation idea is to merge the Keys with Miami-Dade, but that makes no sense because of the Keys’ special character and greatly elongated geography.
Making the Keys an appendage of a monstrously bigger Miami-Dade likely won’t save any money and would create logistical headaches at every turn.
Why should you care about this? Because at some point, you’re likely to have contact with the justice system. You may be sued. A relative’s estate may end up in probate court. You may get called to jury duty. Would it matter to you if the courthouse were 100 miles away, not 10 miles away? Even if none of this affected you personally, these are your tax dollars at work. You are also invited to complete a detailed survey as part of the committee’s work.
Whatever the 14-member committee decides will form a series of recommendations to the Supreme Court, which will send them to the Legislature, which will have the final say. The panel faces a December deadline and the next legislative session begins in January, so whatever happens, it won’t take long.
The committee’s next meeting is from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 25, at the Orange County Courthouse in Orlando. That’s serendipitous because public outrage is still running high over DeSantis’ decision to suspend Worrell on the flimsy pretext that she’s soft on crime at a time when his presidential prospects are fading fast.
A strong public showing in Orlando would tell the committee that people want a strong independent judiciary free from political meddling by a cabal at the state Capitol.
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writer Martin Dyckman and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.