TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Ron DeSantis has urged the Florida Supreme Court to reject a challenge to his suspension of Orlando-area State Attorney Monique Worrell, saying the case “presents a political question.”
“(Part of the Florida Constitution) authorizes the governor to suspend an official for enumerated grounds and grants the Senate alone the power to remove (from office),” attorneys for DeSantis wrote Tuesday in response to a court petition filed in September by Worrell. “The Senate thus is invested with the sole discretion to decide whether the governor’s suspension order adequately stated grounds for suspension, just as the Constitution entrusts to that body the sole power to try impeachments. This (Supreme) Court should now make clear what it has often implied: the validity of a suspension and removal is a non-justiciable political question.”
The response also said DeSantis had grounds to suspend Worrell, alleging that her office “adopted practices and policies resulting in undercharging, excessively slow case times, and the evasion of certain sentence enhancements required by the Legislature.”
DeSantis on Aug. 9 issued an executive order suspending Worrell, a Democrat who was elected in 2020 in Orange and Osceola counties. Among other things, the order alleged that Worrell’s policies prevented or discouraged assistant state attorneys from seeking minimum mandatory sentences for gun crimes and drug trafficking offenses.
Worrell filed the petition at the Supreme Court seeking her job back and arguing that DeSantis did not have a legal basis for the suspension.
“To the extent the governor disagrees with how Ms. Worrell is lawfully exercising her prosecutorial discretion, such a disagreement does not constitute a basis for suspension from elected office,” Worrell’s lawyers wrote. “Ms. Worrell was elected to serve as state attorney, not the governor. Mere disagreement between a governor and a state attorney about where within the lawful range of discretion that discretion should be exercised falls far short of the constitutionally required showing of neglect of duty or incompetence.”
Worrell’s suspension and the resulting legal fight came after DeSantis last year suspended Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren in a highly controversial move.
Warren, a Democrat, challenged his suspension at the Supreme Court, but justices ruled in June that he waited too long to bring the case. Warren also is fighting the suspension in federal court, with the issue pending at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Supreme Court is scheduled Dec. 6 to hear arguments in the Worrell case.
