Poisoned by politics, courts sacrifice independence | Editorial

Mostly unnoticed by the general public, the courts of the nation and of some states are undergoing a decades-long forced transformation from what they ought to be to what no democracy can afford to allow for very long.

Florida is one of those states, though the radicalization here has been recent. Judicial independence has been sacrificed to politics.

That serves not only the Republican Party, the instrument of this conversion. The ultimate beneficiaries are wealthy oligarchs who dread to share power with the people.

Outwardly, this movement is all about social issues such as abortion, but that’s a smokescreen for the real objectives of the donor class of right-wing America. Those include the crippling of government regulation and environmental protection in particular, unlimited political spending by large contributors, low taxes, voter suppression and the malicious distortion of election districts known as gerrymandering.

The pity of this is that the people most delighted by a decision such as the U.S. Supreme Court’s retreat from Roe v. Wade are for the most part ordinary citizens whose interests are not served by right-wing economics, polluted air and water, and climate catastrophes that owe to global warming.

A race to the far right

But these social conservatives are red meat for politicians like Ron DeSantis, who’s now insinuating that former President Donald Trump isn’t conservative enough.

DeSantis told a National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Orlando that they could expect a Supreme Court tilted 7-2 to their side, rather than the present 6-3, if he were elected president and served two terms. Under the Constitution, Trump could serve only one more.

There would be, DeSantis said, “a good chance that you could be called upon to seek replacements for Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito and the issue with that is, you can’t really do better than those two. If you replace a Clarence Thomas with somebody like a Roberts or somebody like that, then you’re going to actually see the court move to the left, and you can’t do that.”

Chief Justice John Roberts and the liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor might also retire during a second presidential term, DeSantis said. In that event, he said, “you would have a 7-2 conservative majority on the Supreme Court that would last a quarter century.”

The Washington Post reported “raucous applause.”

What excited that audience should offend everyone else.

Justices of the nation’s highest court are not always what their patrons expected. Earl Warren, chief justice during the court’s fleeting liberal phase in the mid-20th century, surprised President Eisenhower. David Souter was not as conservative as President George H.W. Bush expected. Sandra Day O’Connor’s middle-of-the road instincts were unforeseen when President Ronald Reagan appointed her.

Trump’s excesses

Not until Trump has a president been so blatant about reshaping the courts to his politics. The former president’s heavy hand is obvious in the lower courts as well in decisions reflecting the bias of judges chosen for their anti-abortion and anti-government leanings.

The judiciary is the most powerful branch of government and the least accountable. It is exceptionally dangerous to the nation for it to be so subservient to politics.

DeSantis should be taken at his word that he would do what he promised at the religious broadcasters’ convention. It’s what he has done to the Florida Supreme Court.

As expected, he appointed Meredith Sasso, chief judge of the new Sixth District Court of Appeal, to the Florida Supreme Court vacancy left by Justice Ricky Polston. Sasso’s appointment means five of the seven Supreme Court justices are now DeSantis appointees, a record for any governor.

Like all his other picks, she’s a member of the right-wing Federalist Society whose co-chairman Leonard Leo orchestrated the conservative takeover of the federal courts and now influences Florida’s, too.

DeSantis has referred to a secret panel that screens his state Supreme Court nominees as “pretty big conservative legal heavyweights,” but only Leo’s name is known. The governor’s refusal to identify any of them led to a flagrantly wrongheaded court ruling that he has “executive privilege” to withhold information, no matter what Florida’s public records law says. That decision is being appealed.

Two of five other nominees sent to DeSantis by the official judicial nominating commission had vivid anti-abortion records, so the governor passed up an opportunity to further ingratiate himself with that voting bloc. Still, Sasso is probably a safe vote to uphold Florida’s present 15-week ban in a case now before the court. If that occurs, the new six-week ban — an effective barrier to nearly all abortions — would automatically take effect.

It bears watching whether the court decides the abortion case before November 2024. DeSantis’ other recently appointed justice, Renatha Francis, will be on the ballot, along with Sasso. To uphold the law, the court would have to retract its landmark 1989 decision that Florida’s constitutional right of privacy protects abortion decisions. A retraction is what DeSantis wants. It would be a glorious upset if the court does not oblige him, but he now probably has six of the seven votes in his pocket. So much for an independent judiciary.

The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Krys Fluker, Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson 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.