Florida in Five: Voters threw him out. DeSantis brought him back. What happens next?

Five stories to read from the past week in Florida politics.

Photo credit: Vox Efx

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Welcome to another installment of Florida in Five: Five* stories you need to read from the past week in Florida politics.

So I stole the idea for this week’s topper from McKenna Schueler, who just wrote a smart piece for the Orlando Weekly newspaper identifying some of the anti-abortion judges up for merit retention votes this year.

That got me thinking about two appellate-court judges in particular who I think are worth paying attention to.

One of them is on Schueler’s list, which focused on judges who will appear on Orlando-area ballots: Jared Smith, a judge on the Sixth District Court of Appeal.

Smith might just be the most infamous judge in all of Florida. He’s the former Hillsborough County Circuit Court judge who once refused to let a 17-year-old with an unplanned pregnancy get an abortion because, in part, her school grades weren’t good enough.

The decision, which was later overturned, outraged local voters, who threw Smith off the bench just a few months later — only to see Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis turn around and stick Smith on a higher court.

Smith’s back on the ballot this year, in a vote that will determine whether he can continue as an appellate court judge for another six years. Hillsborough voters won’t have a say this time, though; the Sixth DCA, which stretches from Naples to Orlando, doesn’t include Tampa Bay.

The other is Judge Bradford “Brad” Thomas, a Jeb Bush appointee who serves on the First District Court of Appeal in north Florida.

Thomas recently wrote an unusually extreme abortion opinion. It involves the state’s forced notification and consent laws, which prohibit anyone under the age of 18 from obtaining an abortion without first notifying and getting permission from a parent or guardian.

Parental notification was actually the big abortion debate in Florida when I first started covering Tallahassee 20 years ago. And it’s always stuck with me as the quintessential example of something that sounds so simple and reasonable on the surface — but is actually quite complicated and even dangerous if you take just a moment to think it through.  

Obviously, any good parent would want to know if their teenage daughter was going through something as serious as an unplanned pregnancy, to be there for them, and to help them make the smartest, safest decision for themselves and their future.

But most young people who need an abortion do talk to their parent — because they have a healthy family relationship, not because the government makes them.

The young people who don’t are in much more dangerous situations, like young women who live with, or have fled from, abusive homes. And it’s those vulnerable young people who are impacted by forced consent and notification laws.

What supporters of Florida’s abortion notification and consent laws will tell you is that these laws include protections for young people in dangerous family situations — by giving them the option to go to court instead and get what’s known as a “judicial bypass” or a “judicial waiver.”

What they don’t tell you, though, is that some anti-abortion judges simply refuse to grant these waivers.

Sometimes they find fig-leaf excuses — like when Smith cited that 17-year-old’s GPA as a reason to deny her a waiver. But sometimes they don’t even bother with that.

Which brings us back to Thomas. He wrote an opinion earlier this year in which he argued that no young person should ever be able to get an abortion without first notifying and getting permission from a parent or guardian.

The state’s entire judicial bypass system “unquestionably violates the parents’ rights…by excluding them from the courtroom and from notice and any opportunity to be heard regarding their minor daughter’s decision to terminate her pregnancy,” Thomas ruled in a concurring opinion published in January.

“It is difficult to imagine a more grievous violation of constitutional law,” Thomas wrote. “This the state cannot do.”

An excerpt from Judge Brad Thomas’ concurring opinion in the case Re: Jane Doe 23-B (Source: First District Court of Appeal)

It’s a notion that may eventually be tested before the U.S. Supreme Court.

But in the meantime, Thomas must again be tested before north Florida voters.

*To paraphrase Barbossa, five is more what you’d call a guideline than an actual rule.

Nothing to see here

A crane collapsed in Hurricane Milton. Authorities aren’t investigating (Tampa Bay Times) ($)

Pepe Fanjul makes an appearance

How Republican Billionaires Learned to Love Trump Again (The New Yorker) ($)

But don’t say climate change

‘You need boots to live here, or a boat’: King tides are swamping Miami streets again (Miami Herald) ($)

See also: Storms Be Damned, Florida Keeps Building in High-Risk Areas (Wall Street Journal) ($)

An issue to watch

Polluted water from Mosaic phosphate plant likely spilled to Tampa Bay during Milton (Tampa Bay Times) ($)

See also: Milton likely to hit Florida’s phosphate mining hub, worrying environmentalists (Tampa Bay Times ($)

Well this sounds quite bad

Why the DeSantis administration lawyer who threatened TV stations over abortion ad quit (Miami Herald) ($)

See also: Florida abortion ban sends young woman to Illinois to end a pregnancy that was harming her (Palm Beach Post) ($)

Perspectives

DeSantis admin threatens criminal charges for TV stations airing ads he dislikes. Putin would be proud (Orlando Sentinel) ($)

Abortion advocates learn its dangerous to disagree with Gov. Ron DeSantis (Florida Times-Union) ($)

What do Florida cows and lab-grown meat have to do with Florida hurricanes? (Palm Beach Post) ($)

Another conviction in Florida’s ghost candidate scandal, but the senators who benefited remain in office (Orlando Sentinel) ($)