By David M. Greenwald
Executive Editor
Orlando, FL – A lawsuit was filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Orlando Division, by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) on behalf of voters from Orange and Osceola Counties, and a grassroots democracy-building organization with members who are voters in those counties, challenging Gov. Ron DeSantis’s suspension of duly-elected State Attorney Monique Worrell:
“This lawsuit seeks injunctive and declaratory relief to prevent Governor Ron DeSantis from effectively disenfranchising almost 400,000 voters in violation of rights protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution,” the complaint read.
In 2020, Monique Worrell, a former public defender and law professor, ran as a reform-minded candidate for State Attorney in the Ninth Judicial Circuit, Florida’s third largest judicial circuit encompassing Orange and Osceola counties.
In her campaign, she pledged to enact a series of reforms “geared toward achieving a fairer, more equitable criminal legal system and a safer community.”
In its endorsement of Worrell, the Orlando Sentinel stated that she “wants punishment to be defined more by fairness and less by how many people you lock up, particularly people who commit non-violent crimes.”
The paper added, Worrell wanted to try “harder to understand and change the root cause of crime” and designed her campaign around solving problems.
Upon election in 2020 after receiving nearly two-thirds of the vote, she assumed office on January 5, 2021. She moved forward with implementing many of her campaign promises.
The complaint alleges from the beginning, “for political and ideological reasons,” Governor DeSantis “was resistant to accepting the will of the voters and hostile toward Ms. Worrell’s reform agenda.”
The complaint alleges, “In the aftermath of Ms. Worrell’s election, Governor DeSantis expressed his strong opposition to her policies, launched investigations into her prosecutorial decisions, and used the bully pulpit of the governorship to distort her record on combating crime.”
This culminated in Governor DeSantis in August, 2023, suspending Worrell, allegedly “without a shred of credible evidence to support his allegations of ‘neglect of duty’ and ‘incompetence’—the purported grounds for her suspension.”
The complaint further alleges, “Governor DeSantis’s baseless suspension of Ms. Worrell effectively disenfranchised the voters who elected her and seriously undermined the fundamental fairness and integrity of the electoral process.”
The complaint alleges that in February of 2023, DeSantis’s general counsel sent a letter requesting information relating to a series of shootings in Pine Hills, an unincorporated subdivision in Orange County.
The letter blamed Worrell for the crime, accusing her of allowing the suspect to “remain on the streets after multiple arrests, including one your office has refused to prosecute.”
Worrell issued a press release in response to the letter attempting to correct misconceptions and insinuations that her policies promoted crime.
She noted that prior arrests of the suspect occurred before her tenure, and none were for serious offenses that could have gotten him “off the streets” through the imposition of a lengthy prison sentence.
In March 2023, Worrell released data demonstrating she did not prosecute any fewer cases than two of her predecessors.
In May 2023, the Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board published an editorial forecasting that Governor DeSantis’s vendetta against Worrell would lead to her suspension and undermine not only voters but the process of justice in Orange and Osceola counties.
On August 9, 2023, Governor DeSantis issued Executive Order 23-160 suspending Worrell and naming Andrew Bain, an individual Governor DeSantis appointed to the bench in 2020, as her successor.
In his Executive Order, Governor DeSantis stated that “during Ms. Worrell’s tenure in office, the administration of criminal justice in the Ninth Circuit has been so clearly and fundamentally derelict as to constitute both neglect of duty and incompetence.”
Additionally, early drafts of Governor DeSantis’s executive order suspending Worrell reference George Soros, who provided funding to Democratic candidates including Ms. Worrell.
In presidential fundraising emails and in speeches, Governor DeSantis has boasted that he is the “only elected official in America to remove a ‘progressive’ Soros-funded district attorney,” a reference to his suspension of Andrew Warren, who also was backed by George Soros.
The lawsuit charges that Governor DeSantis suspended Worrell “for doing nothing more than exercising her prosecutorial discretion, a discretion intrinsic to the criminal legal system.”
It adds, “The Florida Constitution provides that a state attorney has complete discretion in deciding whether and how to prosecute.”
In a statement from Fair and Just Prosecution Executive Director Miriam Krinsky, she noted, “We applaud the voters of Orange and Osceola Counties who took action today to ensure that their votes matter and their voices are heard, despite the undemocratic and unlawful suspension by Gov. Ron Desantis earlier this year of duly elected State Attorney Monique Worrell.”
“As noted in the lawsuit, this decision has effectively disenfranchised nearly 400,000 Floridian voters,” Krinsky explained, “The right to vote and to have your vote count is the foundation of our democracy, yet Gov. DeSantis decided he knew better than the two-thirds of local voters who elected SA Worrell in 2020.
“This is simply one of a number of efforts by DeSantis to remove elected local leaders based on nothing more than political differences. Florida’s citizens deserve to be represented by their chosen representatives, not by the governor’s hand-picked replacements.”
Krinsky continued, “Our democracy will not survive if we allow leaders to act lawlessly and with impunity. And when communities lose trust in the integrity of our democracy, it undermines public safety, putting all of us at risk.”
She concluded, “The office of State Attorney does not belong to Gov. DeSantis – it belongs to the people. We commend the plaintiffs and the SPLC for fighting for all Floridians and for democracy, and we hope the courts will uphold these fundamental principles, restore trust in the rule of law, and protect voters from the governor’s egregious abuse of power.”
DeSantis, the suit alleges, “has a history of targeting elected officials who disagree with him on policy positions.”
In May, Governor DeSantis told his supporters at a dinner that, while he only earned 50% of the vote, it “entitled [him] to wield 100 percent of the executive power.”
Almost a year to the day before he suspended Ms. Worrell, Governor DeSantis used his executive power to suspend another state attorney, Andrew Warren.
A federal judge found, however, that Governor DeSantis suspended Mr. Warren solely for political and ideological reasons such as Mr. Warren’s “advocacy of positions consistent with the reform-prosecutor viewpoint” and his “affiliation with and receipt of campaign funding from the Democratic Party and, indirectly, from Mr. Soros.”
However, the judge concluded that they lacked the authority to prevent this abuse of power.
In addition to Worrell and Warren, Governor DeSantis has suspended seven other elected officials who were not facing charges: a sheriff, a school superintendent, an elections supervisor, and four school board members.
“Six of these seven officials were Democrats, making a total of eight elected Democratic officials removed primarily over political differences,” the complaint added.
