Renatha Francis, Palm Beach County judge, named finalist for spot on Florida Supreme Court

Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Renatha Francis on Monday moved a step closer to serving on the Florida Supreme Court.

Three years after she was appointed to the county’s bench, Francis is one of six candidates a judicial nominating commission tapped for Gov. Ron DeSantis to consider to replace Justice Alan Lawson, who is retiring Aug. 31.

Francis, whose hopes to serve on the state’s highest court were dashed in 2020 when the Supreme Court ruled she failed to meet minimum constitutional requirements, is widely expected to get the job.

Video online: See the Judicial Nominating Commission's interviews from July 11

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If she is selected, the 45-year-old Jamaican-born jurist would be the first Caribbean national to serve on the high court.

Further, she would become the only Black and second woman on the current bench. The 2019 retirement of Justice Peggy Quince meant that for the first time in nearly four decades, no Blacks were on the high court.

All candidates members of conservative Federalist Society

None of the five others on the commission’s short list are Black, although three others are women. The three women include Denise Harle, senior counsel for the anti-abortion group Alliance Defending Freedom. The two other women are: 5th District Court of Appeal Judge Meredith Sasso and Hillsborough County Circuit Judge Anne-Leigh Gaylord Moe.

The two men on the list – Judges Robert Long and Adam Tanenbaum – both serve on the Tallahassee-based 1st District Court of Appeal.

During an all-day hearing on Saturday in Tampa, members of the Judicial Nominating Commission quizzed 16 applicants about their legal philosophy and what qualifications they would bring to the bench. (Another applicant was interviewed earlier.)

All of the 17 applicants are members of the Federalist Society, a conservative group that advocates strict adherence to the federal and state constitutions. So when it came to explaining their judicial philosophy, most of their answers were similar.

The quality that makes Francis different from other more experienced candidates is her hardscrabble background, said commission member Jesse Panuccio.

He called what happened to Francis when her nomination was scuttled two years ago “a disgrace.”

He blamed the controversy on unnamed elected leaders and suggested that it was fueled by “elitism” among those in the legal profession who look down on someone such as Francis, who attended a small for-profit law school instead of graduating from Harvard or Yale universities.

“I thought it was a disgrace, frankly, and I’m sorry it happened,” said Panuccio, a former acting associate attorney general at the U.S. Department of Justice who graduated from Harvard Law School.

An uproar greeted Francis’ nomination two years ago because, contrary to the Florida Constitution, she hadn’t been a member of the Florida Bar for 10 years. DeSantis argued that she would have met the constitutional requirement by the time she took office four months after he appointed her.

Deciding a lawsuit Rep. Geraldine Thompson, D-Orlando, filed to block Francis’ appointment, the Supreme Court disagreed. It ruled that Francis had to be qualified at the time DeSantis selected her. Therefore, it ruled, she couldn’t join the court.

Thompson and others said there were plenty of other Black judges and attorneys in the state who are well qualified to serve on the high court.

Two years later, Thompson said she her view of Francis hasn't changed.

"Because Judge Francis knew that she was unqualified when appointed in 2020, I don’t expect that she will be able to be objective and able to rule based on the law rather than a political agenda," Thompson said in a statement. "Unfortunately, there is now a widespread lack of confidence in the Supreme Court."

Francis calls her rise to bench 'a testament to the American spirit'

Francis agreed that confidence in the judiciary is at record lows. Such feelings, she said, can be traced to a lack of understanding about judges' roles in settling disputes.

"The job of a judge is not to rescue people from the consequences of their decisions," she said. "It is to apply the law as we find it so that we're not exercising force of will. We're exercising judgment."

At Panuccio’s urging, Francis repeated her life story for the committee. Born in Jamaica, she said she dreamed of becoming a lawyer.

When her mother left the island nation to move to the United States, she was left to run the family business, a trucking company and bar, while raising her younger sister and getting a bachelor's degree from the University of the West Indies.

She said she ended up at Florida Coastal University in Jacksonville for a simple reason: It offered to pay her tuition.

“I didn’t know what the process was to go about getting scholarships or grants or any of them,” she said. “So I jumped at the opportunity.”

Since her graduation in 2010, the school has closed due to accreditation issues and financial problems.

Rather than criticize her law school, Francis insisted people should look at her accomplishments.

"It’s a testament to the American spirit and I think that’s something we need to celebrate more,” she said. “It’s something we should look at and really celebrate in terms of the achievements I’ve been able to accomplish up to this point.”

After working as a clerk for the 1st District Court of Appeals and for the politically connected Shutts & Bowen law firm in Miami, Gov. Rick Scott in 2017 appointed to the bench in Miami-Dade County.

Three years later, after her husband got a job in the West Palm Beach area, she applied for an opening on the circuit bench in Palm Beach County. She was selected over a dozen county lawyers and judges who applied for the post.

“I’m truly living the American dream,” she said.

DeSantis has 60 days to decide which of the six candidates he will select.

Jane Musgrave covers federal and civil courts and occasionally ventures into criminal trials in state court. Contact her at jmusgrave@pbpost.com.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Judge Renatha Francis among nominees for Florida Supreme Court spot