Should We Retain Florida's Judges?
November 5, 2022 3:44pm
As happens at every general election, there are many judges on the Florida ballot in what are known as "merit retention votes." Those votes give the electorate the choice of whether or not judges on the Florida Supreme Court and in Florida's five District Courts of Appeal get to keep their jobs. All ballots statewide have the Supreme Court judges on them. The ballots in each of the five judicial districts have only that district's appeals court judges on them.
The way judges are chosen to serve on the Florida Supreme Court has changed many times in the state's history. When Florida became a state in 1845, the legislature voted to determine which circuit judges would be elevated to serve on the Supreme Court. Then in 1853, that changed to Supreme Court justices being elected by popular vote. Less than a decade later, in 1861, the constitution was amended to allow the governor to appoint justices with the advice and consent of the Florida Senate. That method mirrored the way justices are selected to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.
A little over a century later, in 1976, the constitution was amended to implement the system we use today, in which the Governor appoints judges to the Florida Supreme Court and to Florida's appellate courts. He is required to make those appointments from a list of candidates chosen by the Judicial Nominating Commission. No confirmation by the Florida Senate or anyone else is required. Those judges serve six year terms. New justices face their first merit retention vote in the next general election that occurs more than one year after their appointments. When when their six year terms expire, they can get additional terms, not by a reappointment, but by the electorate voting to retain them. They can also be forced off the bench by age. Florida has a mandatory retirement age of 75 for all Supreme Court, Appellate Court, Circuit Court, and County Court judges.
Circuit court judges and county court judges in Florida are still elected by popular vote. Statewide, there are exactly twelve circuit judge and county judge races on Tuesday's ballot.
Regarding appointments by the Governor to the Supreme Court and appellate courts, those appointments can be undone if the citizens vote to NOT retain the appointed judges. The judges serve upon appointment and Investiture. But if they lose a retention vote, they'll be out of a job.
In my opinion, all but one justice on the Supreme Court should be retained. The one that should be booted is Jorge Labarga. I don't know enough about all the appellate court judges to make an informed opinion of them. And I'm not going to waste my time learning about them. I just leave all those judicial retention questions on the ballot blank. Why? Because never since 1976 when the system was implemented in Florida has a judge ever been removed from office by losing a retention vote. And there have been a few judges that had multi-million dollar campaigns run against them trying to get them removed from office via retention vote. But they all have been retained anyway. Consequently, I don't bother to even vote on those.
The most famous campaign to remove a judge via a merit retention vote was in 1992 when there was a massive statewide campaign to remove Rosemary Barkett from the Supreme Court. She was a far-Left activist judge who was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1985. She hated guns and loved murderers. She voted to overturn almost every death penalty sentence that came before her. So there was an aggressive advertising campaign to inform the voters of how horrible she was and to encourage a "no" vote on her retention. Despite that campaign, she was retained with 60.9% of the vote. Then two years later, in 1994, President Clinton named her to the U.S. Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. That got her out of the Florida court system, which was nice. But it put her in a position to do further damage to our country from the federal bench where judges serve for life - although in her case she resigned in 2013 to go serve on the Iran–United States Claims Tribunal in The Hague.
So if a massive statewide campaign trying to remove a soft-on-crime justice could not remove a judge through a retention vote, nothing will. The closest any judge in Florida ever came to losing a merit retention vote was in 2010 when Judge Charles Kahn, Jr. of the First District (which extends from Pensacola to Jacksonville) only got 53.1% of the vote to retain him. But it was enough to keep him on the bench. So I see these merit retention votes as a constitutionally mandated process that is not worth my time to research. Because no matter how bad a judge is, they'll be retained. There's never been a judge removed from the bench by losing a merit retention vote. Never.
Do do what you want on those. But no matter how you vote, every judge on the ballot will be retained.