Vote no, twice, and remove these Florida justices | Endorsement

Florida would have no need to amend its Constitution to restore abortion rights if only the state Supreme Court had left well enough alone.

Two justices who repeated abortion rights, Renatha Francis and Meredith Sasso, face merit retention votes on the November ballot for six-year terms. We strongly recommend a “no” vote on both of them.

Voters amended the Constitution in 1980 to provide that “every natural person has the right to be left alone and free from governmental intrusion into the person’s private life except as otherwise provided herein” (Article I, Section 23).

That seemed perfectly clear to the Supreme Court at the time. In a 1989 case known as In Re TW, it held — emphatically and unanimously — that Section 23 encompassed reproductive freedom. It was predicted, naively, that Florida women’s rights were safe even if Roe v. Wade were repealed.

The thoughts in 1989

As Chief Justice Leander Shaw explained for the liberal 1989 court, it would be difficult to think of anything more personal or private. He drew an analogy to the right to make one’s own end-of-life decisions, which was already well established. (That, too, is in danger.)

The current court, dominated by conservative appointees of Gov. Ron DeSantis, eviscerated personal privacy last year, as everyone knew it would.

The Fort Lauderdale News, Nov. 5, 1980

It did so, 6 to 1, on the arrogant premise that the people didn’t know what they were doing when they ratified Section 23, even though it was seven years after the Roe decision. Abortion was not mentioned in the 1980 debate, the majority said, so voters could not have consciously intended to protect it.

A critical vote on Nov. 5

Voters can rid the court of two justices who signed that intellectually corrupt decision.

Your ballot asks: “Shall Justice Renatha Francis (and Sasso) of the Supreme Court be retained in office?” They are two separate yes-or-no questions without named opponents.

The four other complicit justices had been retained for new six-year terms before the April abortion decision.

It’s impossible to find any merit in justices who would so glibly trash an important precedent that had secured the personal rights of millions of Floridians for two generations.

A notable lack of merit

In ordinary times, we would not recommend unseating a judge on the basis of a particular decision. But this is not only about one decision.

Nothing has been ordinary about this court since 2019, when mandatory retirements of three justices allowed DeSantis to begin packing it with people chosen for radical extremism and for how they would vote on abortion rights and anything else on the hit list of the governor, corporations and the far-right wing of his party. The majority justices casually repeat any precedent they don’t like.

Conservative attorney John Stemberger, president of the anti-abortion Florida Family Policy Council, called DeSantis’ court “the court of our dreams.”

It’s more like a nightmare.

DeSantis, like his predecessor, Rick Scott, does not respect Florida’s judicial nominating commissions as the guardians of judicial integrity, intellectual ability and independence they were meant to be.

The Supreme Court nominating panel recommends only those applicants whom they know he wants — and who must belong, like DeSantis, to the right-wing Federalist Society. His national judicial appointment guru Leonard Leo, who engineered the repeal of Roe, is also one of DeSantis’ private, unacknowledged advisers.

Sasso and Francis were pre-selected. Francis, in particular, was groomed for the judiciary as a protégé of the law firm Shutts & Bowen, one of whose partners sits on the Supreme Court JNC and regularly argues important political cases before the five DeSantis justices he had anointed.

The fix was in — twice

Francis, 47, a former Palm Beach County circuit judge, was tracked by the court despite being the least qualified of any successful applicant in decades.

The commission nominated her and the governor appointed her even though she hadn’t been a Florida lawyer for the 10 years that the Constitution requires. That was too much even for the court; prodded by a lawsuit, it told the governor to pick someone else. At the first legal opportunity, she was nominated and appointed again.

The political corruption is so obvious to Florida’s lawyers that when Justice Ricky Polston unexpectedly resigned, the nominating panel received only three applications and had to ask for more. The fix was in for Sasso, 41, a judge on the new 6th District Court of Appeal.

Applicant Victoria Avalon, an assistant state attorney in Lakeland, called it out. All her co-workers, Avalon told the commission, “were asking me, why are you wasting your time? Everyone knows who’s going to get picked. “This may not be true, but it is the perception.”

It is more than perception. It is an ugly, inexcusable reality. It will be a long slog to restore Florida’s judiciary to the excellent reputation it once enjoyed, but it’s imperative, and it begins with you, the voter, casting a “no” vote on the retention of Justices Francis and Sasso.

The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. To contact us, email at [email protected].