Florida probably has dozens, maybe even hundreds, of qualified and capable legal minds who would improve the Florida Supreme Court. But only 10 applied for the current vacancy, and some of them come with controversial connections or backgrounds.
Taking the easy path, a nominating panel submitted six — the most the Constitution allows — to Gov. Ron DeSantis. All six, like DeSantis, belong to the conservative Federalist Society.
Whomever DeSantis picks will join five justices who owe their appointments to him and almost always vote as he likes. The seventh and senior justice, Jorge Labarga, born in Cuba and raised in Pahokee, will continue to write solitary dissents.
This one-sided court doesn’t reflect Gov. Reubin Askew’s goal when he established the wistfully named merit selection system in 1972 or what he, legislators and voters intended when they provided in 1976 that future appellate judges would be appointed, not elected.
A system failure
The intent of Florida’s reforms was to keep partisan politics out of the courts, and to give every able lawyer a fair chance to apply.
The fact that only 10 wanted to replace departing Justice Charles Canady in a state with more than 80,000 lawyers shows a system failure. The perception is that only like-minded DeSantis partisans, preferably with inside connections, need apply. This is exactly what Askew tried to prevent.
This particular seat is assigned to the Second District, meaning that the new justice must live in that district “at the time of appointment.” Curiously, four of the six nominees do not appear to live in the nine counties that comprise the jurisdiction of the Second District Court of Appeal, or DCA, in Tampa Bay.
The four are Robert Long and Adam Tanenbaum, judges of the First DCA in Tallahassee, and Joshua Mize and Roger Gannam of the Sixth DCA, based in Lakeland. DeSantis appointed all four. By law, their home addresses, including the cities, are not public.
The two nominees who appear to live in the district are John Guard, chief deputy to former Attorney General Ashley Moody, who said he lives in Plant City, and Samuel Salario Jr., a Tampa lawyer and former Second DCA judge.
A conflict, narrowly avoided
Salario is a law partner of Jason Gonzalez, a Tallahassee attorney and recent appointee to the Supreme Court Judicial Nominating Commission who’s close to DeSantis politically.
In an email he forwarded to the Sun Sentinel, Gonzalez resigned from the nominating commission the day before its candidate interviews. He said he intended to abstain on Salario’s candidacy but that the law said he couldn’t.
Guard had been nominated to the federal bench, but his path was stalled by questions about his role in the Hope Florida scandal and Wednesday, news sites Law360 and Florida Politics, reported that he was no longer under consideration. As a deputy under former Attorney General Ashley Moody, now a U.S. senator, Guard signed off on the $67 million settlement with health care provider Centene, which was accused of overbilling Medicaid.
That politically toxic settlement steered $10 million to Hope Florida, a charity sponsored by DeSantis’ wife.
Hope Florida then diverted the money to political committees that spent most of it supporting the governor’s campaign against the recreational marijuana initiative that narrowly failed in 2024. A Leon County grand jury has been investigating this.
In his application for the Supreme Court seat, Guard wrote that he was a key figure in a $26 billion nationwide settlement with Purdue Pharma in the Oxycontin addiction scandal and in the state’s legal arguments upholding Florida’s strict six-week abortion ban and overturning the court’s 1989 decision that the state constitution’s right of privacy protected abortion. Those should appeal to DeSantis.
Something’s amiss
Finalist Adam Tanenbaum has also racked up conservative credentials. His application noted that he co-authored a district court opinion upholding the 2022 gerrymander that DeSantis dictated to the Legislature, a decision later upheld by the Supreme Court on different grounds.
The result forcibly retired North Florida’s only Black Democrat in Congress and essentially nullified Florida’s voter-approved “Fair Districts” initiatives.
Tanenbaum was also counsel to the state House in the two-year term of Speaker Richard Corcoran, a DeSantis ally who’s now president of New College of Florida.
Finalist Roger Gannam might be one of the most controversial. He’s been employed by Liberty Counsel, a conservative public interest law firm. One of his cases challenged the government’s refusal to allow “religious liberty” exemptions from COVID-19 vaccination mandates for military personnel. That too would resonate with DeSantis.
The nominee pool might have been limited by the residency requirement, and this is not the first Supreme Court vacancy where that rule appears to have suppressed applications. That rule is nonsense — especially with two applicants who pretty clearly spend most of their time in Tallahassee, and two who work in Lakeland.
But there’s a bigger problem here: Wherever the new justice calls home, it’s a safe bet that he will carry on the far-right, and frequently lawless, DeSantis philosophy for a long time to come.
The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board includes Executive Editor Roger Simmons, Opinion Editor Krys Fluker and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant, Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney and editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman. Send letters to insight@orlandosentinel.com.
