Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, fired Monique Worrell from her job as the State Attorney for Florida’s Ninth Judicial Circuit. Worrell was the chosen prosecutor for the Orlando area.
When DeSantis was in office, he said, “the administration of criminal justice in the Ninth Circuit had been so clearly and fundamentally derelict as to constitute both neglect of duty and incompetence.”
Worrell said that DeSantis did not have the power to do this, so she asked the Supreme Court of Florida for a writ of quo warranto and a writ of mandamus to stop him from doing this and put her back in office.
In a per curiam ruling, the court turned down her request, saying that the governor’s order to suspend her was constitutional and should be given the due respect it deserves.
In Florida’s constitution, it says that the governor can “remove from office” any state official who can not be impeached. As per the Florida Constitution, state attorneys cannot be removed from their jobs.
However, the governor can suspend any of them for “malfeasance, misfeasance, neglect of duty, drunkenness, incompetence, permanent inability to perform official duties, or commission of a felony.”
When it comes to this case, the court said that “neglect of duty” means “the neglect or failure on the part of a public officer to do and perform some duty or tasks laid on him” by law.
It does not matter if the neglect is intentional, caused by malice, ignorance, or oversight.The court also said that “incompetency” means “any physical, moral, or intellectual quality that means someone is unable to do the duties of his office.”
The court also said that “a state attorney like Worrell is tasked with the ‘duty to prosecute violations of the law.'”
The court said it would only look into two small parts of the governor’s order to suspend Worrell: first, it would make sure that “the governor has specified the applicable grounds for suspension” under the relevant section of the Florida Constitution;
and second, it would make sure that “the factual allegations in the suspension order… bear a reasonable relation to the asserted basis for the suspension.”
The court said that the governor’s order met all of those requirements. It gave Worrell’s reasons for being suspended—neglect of duty and incompetence—as well as facts to back them up.
The court pointed out that DeSantis’s executive order, which was fifteen pages long, explained how Worrell had “authorized or allowed charging practices that ‘permitted violent offenders, drug traffickers, serious juvenile offenders, and pedophiles to avoid incarceration when otherwise warranted by Florida law.'”
The court did not agree with Worrell’s argument that DeSantis’s accusations were not specific enough to be enforced or got in the way of her prosecutorial authority too much.
“Worrell’s objection as to vagueness is really about the sufficiency of the evidence marshaled in the Executive Order,” the justices said. They made it clear that the issue of whether or not the evidence was sufficient is for the trier of fact to decide.
As per the Florida Constitution, “the trier of fact in these matters” is the Senate. This means that they decide if the accusations are strong enough to support the charges of “neglect of duty” and “incompetence.”
The court also made it clear that “a suspension order does not preclude a state attorney from lawfully exercising prosecutorial discretion when it alleges that such discretion is not being exercised in specific cases but rather because of general policies that have led to categorical enforcement practices.”
It went on to say that even though prosecutorial authority is legal in a lot of situations, it is not a full defense against claims of incompetence or dutylessness.
In a different opinion, Justice Renatha Francis agreed and asked the court to rethink how it reviews suspension orders from governors.
She said the court should “stick more closely to what the constitution says in its text” and check to see if the “political question doctrine” comes into play when making decisions in these kinds of cases.
She also said that she thought the court had “wrongly expanded [its] authority to issue writs of quo warranto [that] were historically narrow in scope and limited by their common law background.”
She explained that in the past, these kinds of writs were only given when it was proven that the official in question did not have the right to use the power they did, not when it was clear that the official did have the right to use the power, but did so wrongly.
Justice Jorge Labarga was the only one who disagreed with the court’s ruling. It bothered him that “the Florida Constitution basically lets the governor ignore the will of the majority of voters who elected the official and choose someone else to replace them.”
He also said it was “glaringly unfair” that “only officers who can be impeached under [the Florida Constitution] get the same due process as those who can be suspended.”The majority, on the other hand, said that Labarga’s “main beef is with the Florida Constitution, not with the court’s decision.”