A justice finds greener pastures, and DeSantis’ grip tightens | Editorial

People wondered why Florida Supreme Court Justice Ricky Polston abruptly retired with nearly six years left on the term voters gave him in November.

The answer: He was recruited to be general counsel and chief legal officer of Citizens Property Insurance Corp., the state-backed carrier of last resort, where he will earn $450,000, far more than the $239,442 he was paid as a judge.

Polston, 67, is hardly the first justice to leave for a greener future. The fact that he has a large family to send to college likely figured in his decision, as with others — he and his wife have four biological children and have adopted six more.

What’s exceptional about this is that the person who recruited him, Citizens CEO Tim Cerio, will also help select his successor at the court. Cerio sits on the nine-member Supreme Court Judicial Nominating Commission (JNC), which will nominate up to six applicants for Gov. Ron DeSantis. It will mean that five of the seven sitting justices will now owe their appointments to DeSantis.

Not in the public interest

That’s more than any previous governor. It will root this court deeper and longer into a reactionary, far-right jurisprudence that serves DeSantis’ ideology rather than the public interest.

The JNC’s pattern is to send DeSantis only ironclad conservatives that he prefers. All nine JNC members — including Fred Karlinsky of Broward and Jesse Panuccio of Palm Beach County — are either his appointees or are soon eligible to be reappointed by him.

The nominating commission has set a remarkably short deadline of next Monday, April 3, for applications. It’s a safe bet that people began drafting them before nightfall March 20, the day Polston notified DeSantis of his resignation.

In an e-mail to the Sun Sentinel, Cerio said he recruited Polston and no other applicants were sought.

“Justice Polston is an expert in insurance law, and he was my first choice,” Cerio said. “When Justice Polston decided he was interested in Citizens, he felt it was important to promptly resign from the court, and he did so.”

There are no ethical restrictions against a former justice arguing a case before his former colleagues.

Charlie Crist’s appointee

Polston and Justice Charles Canady, both appointed by Gov. Charlie Crist in 2008, were the nucleus of the court’s conservative bloc that became dominant with DeSantis’ appointments. Only one justice, Jorge Labarga, also a Crist appointee, has consistently dissented from the court’s rightward lurch.

In a recent speech to Florida Federalist Society chapters at Disney World, Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz talked as if it were a good thing that “we have a supermajority of justices who have … committed to a judicial philosophy.”

A state’s highest court is the worst of all places for all minds to think alike.

The JNC should be fostering diversity of opinion on the court. It used to. In 2001, the Legislature gave the governor the power to appoint all nine members of each of the 27 nominating commissions (one for each appellate court and circuit).

Under DeSantis, the Supreme Court JNC has nominated only members or supporters of the arch-conservative Federalist Society, a legal organization that espouses doctrines of “literalism” and “originalism” that ill suit an evolving society.

That narrow focus isn’t the only aspect of the nominating process that a responsible legislature (if Florida had one) should review.

Florida’s most powerful JNC

JNC membership comes with enormous power to influence how the court might be disposed to rule on everything from individual rights to corporate power.

Karlinsky, of Weston, is a lawyer-lobbyist with 65 clients, including 34 in the insurance industry, which is perpetually involved in litigation at the Supreme Court.

Member Daniel Nordby is a member of the Shutts & Bowen law firm, which the governor and his agencies frequently hire to defend them against lawsuits.

Renatha Francis, the most junior Supreme Court justice, is a Shutts & Bowen alumna. Citizens Property Insurance, where CEO Cerio was previously general counsel, is a state-sponsored association that is now Florida’s largest insurer by number of policies sold.

Before 2001, the diversity of the JNCs themselves insulated the process from excessive influence from any source.

Here’s how it worked: The governor appointed three people, usually lawyers. The Florida Bar appointed three. Those six would then appoint three non-lawyers. Today, all nine members of the Supreme Court JNC are lawyers.

A new cloud over the process is one of DeSantis’ own making. A secret panel of what he has described only as “six or seven pretty big legal conservative heavyweights” interviews Supreme Court nominees once the JNC has recommended them.

He has refused to identify them and won a ruling from Tallahassee Circuit Judge Angela Dempsey that he has an “executive privilege” to ignore Florida’s public records law. If sustained on appeal, it will be the most drastic damage to Florida’s Sunshine Law since voters enshrined open government in the Constitution in 1992.

From sources, it is known that Leonard Leo, the former executive vice president of the Federalist Society, is the dominant member of the secret committee. Though never a public official, Leo has had an outsize influence on the entire federal judiciary, coaching Republican presidents and senators on whom to appoint. Last year’s Supreme Court decision overturning a constitutional right to abortion owed as much to him as to anyone else.

Leo now chairs the Teneo Network, a nonprofit that he promises will “crush liberal dominance” in American life beyond the courts.

Voting rights are on Teneo’s hit list. So is anything considered “woke.” He’s obviously a DeSantis type guy.

Leo has an enormous stake in most any issue a state supreme court would consider. For him and his secret colleagues to have the last word with DeSantis on Supreme Court appointments ought to alarm everyone to whom the independence of the courts matters.

With judicial independence dying in Florida, thanks to indifference from the Bar and the public, there is an obvious contrast with Israel, where mass public outrage has forced Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to delay his attempt to seize control of the nation’s judiciary.

Democracy is still thriving in Israel. If only it were so in Florida.

The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board includes Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson, Opinion Page Editor Krys Fluker and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, and Anderson. Send letters to insight@orlandosentinel.com.