11th Circuit Hands DeSantis a Stinging Defeat

Ron DeSantis' game plan for his now sputtering presidential campaign was to endear himself with the evangelical/Christofascist and white supremacists who now dominate the Republican Party base.  Censoring accurate history about slavery and race, pushing bills to erase LGBT individuals' existence from  public schools, and censoring elected public officials who object to his racist and Christofascist agenda all followed.   DeSantis' agenda has harmed Florida tourism driven teachers and professors from Florida's public schools and universities.  Meanwhile, his campaign is on near life support and he appears to place third in the Iowa caucuses on Monday. In addition, DeSantis has seen courts stay parts of his ugly legislation and this past week the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of an elected district attorney that DeSantis suspended for not embracing DeSantis' agenda and more or less gave DeSantis a resounding bitch slap in its ruling.  What makes the ruling more notable is the fact that the 11th Circuit has a reputation for being "conservative" - read reactionary - yet trashed DeSantis.  A piece in Salon looks at the spanking given to DeSantis.  Here are excerpts:

In the last gasps of his presidential campaign, Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis continues to brag that he made his state the place where “woke goes to die.” He has made his war on woke a central plank in his ongoing effort to secure the Republican nomination.

There has been nothing subtle about DeSantis’ effort to promote himself as a leading culture warrior or to take credit for slaying the woke dragons. . . . . “We fight the woke in the legislature. We fight the woke in the schools. We fight the woke in the corporations. We will never ever surrender to the woke mob.”

In debate after debate over the last several months, DeSantis has faulted his rivals for being unwilling to “stand up and fight back against what the left is doing to this country” and boasted of many victories over the woke mob.   Among them, DeSantis lists wins over the teachers union on school choice, over Dr. Anthony Fauci on COVID policies, and over George Soros after the Sunshine State governor “removed two of his radical district attorneys.”

On Wednesday, DeSantis suffered a stinging defeat when a three-judge panel of the notoriously conservative  11^th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Andrew Warren, one of those district attorneys in a suit he filed last year. That suit alleged that DeSantis had suspended him “in retaliation for exercising his right of free speech….” and asked “the court to declare the suspension unconstitutional and require that DeSantis reinstate him.’

The court agreed.

Warren drew the ire of DeSantis when he publicly voiced his opposition to the governor’s efforts to limit the rights of transgendered people and of women seeking abortions. 

As Judge Jill Pryor recounts in her 11^th Circuit opinion, “In the summer of 2021, Warren signed… (a statement) expressing concern about ‘bills targeting the transgender community,’ especially transgender youth access to gender affirming care…’” and pledging  “‘ to use their settled discretion and limited resources on enforcement of laws that will not erode the safety and well-being of their community.’”  

A year later, Pryor says, Warren “joined nearly 70 elected prosecutors nationwide in signing… (a statement) addressing the criminalization of abortion after the Supreme Court decided Dobbs vs Jackson Women’s Health Organization.” That statement included an acknowledgment that prosecutors have a responsibility “to refrain from using limited criminal justice system resources to criminalize personal medical decisions.”

As the New York Times reports, an investigation of the circumstances surrounding DeSantis’ suspension of Warren, revealed that the governor’s office “seemed driven by a preconceived political narrative, bent on a predetermined outcome, content with a flimsy investigation and focused on maximizing media attention for Mr. DeSantis.”

When Warren signed the statements on transgender and abortion rights, the judge said, he “spoke as a private citizen.” His “speech occurred outside the workplace, and he never distributed the advocacy statements inside the workplace or included them in internal materials or training sessions. He employed no workplace resources and never marshaled the statements through his process for creating policies.” 

Moreover, Pryor noted that “neither statement referenced any Florida law that would go on unenforced.”

She scolded the governor for punishing Warren for purely partisan reasons. She called him out  for seeking political benefit from “bringing down a reform prosecutor,” and reminded DeSantis that “the First Amendment protects government employees from adverse employment actions based on partisan considerations.”

The judge also noted that despite the governor’s imperial pretensions, “Voters elected Warren; DeSantis did not appoint him.” She explained that “If alignment with DeSantis’s political preferences were an appropriate requirement to perform the state attorney’s duties, there would be little point in local elections open to candidates across the political spectrum.” 

And, in language that has particular resonance in 2024, Judge Pryor wrote, “Elections mean something. Majorities bestow mandates.” In a democracy, the job of elected officials, including prosecutors, is to translate those mandates into policy.

At the time he was suspended, Warren got it right when he labeled what DeSantis had done as “part of the authoritarian playbook,” and “something you’d expect to see in Russia. Not in the United States.” He was right again this week when he called the 11^th Circuit’s free speech decision crucial to “the protection of democracy.”