Andrew Bain, a member of the conservative Federalist Society, former prosecutor and Orange County judge, was picked Wednesday by Gov. Ron DeSantis to replace Monique Worrell after he suspended her as state attorney for Orange and Osceola counties.
Bain was appointed to the county bench by DeSantis in 2020. Before that Bain, 38, worked as a prosecutor for about seven years in the Orange-Osceola circuit, handling cases involving misdemeanors, felonies and juvenile delinquencies.
“I started my legal career at this office,” Bain said Wednesday.
Speaking at a press conference with Gov. Ron DeSantis, Bain cited the “second purpose of the law” as described by John Calvin, the 16th-century French Protestant reformer.
“For me this is a place where John Calvin’s second purpose of the law came to life,” he said. “The second purpose for the law is the restraint on evil. The law in and of itself cannot change the human heart. It can, however, protect the righteous from the unjust.”
Worrell, he said, “has allowed lawlessness to take root in our community.”
“My goals as state attorney are to restore order and restore the faith in the law,” Bain added.
According to his official judicial bio, Bain handled criminal cases in 2020, was on a specialized assignment in 2021 and has since handled civil cases. County civil judges handle small claims and civil disputes involving $30,000 or less.
Gov. Ron DeSantis suspends Orange-Osceola State Attorney Monique Worrell from office
In an interview with the Orlando Sentinel while seeking re-election last year, Bain said his life experiences — from being a McDonald’s fry cook to being an athlete — made him a judge with “sharp hearing and the ability to understand.” Bain played football and earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Miami and before attending law school at Florida A&M University College of Law.
“The ability to listen with your whole body by a person with diverse life experiences brings the ability to understand the parties before the court,” Bain said.
In his time overseeing criminal cases in county court, Bain received low marks in a judicial qualifications poll by the Central Florida Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys, ranking last among Orange County criminal judges, with respondents describing him as “state-leaning” or prosecution-biased.
During a forum hosted by the League of Women Voters, Bain confirmed his membership in the Federalist Society, a powerful legal organization influential in getting conservatives appointed to the judiciary, from local courts to the U.S. Supreme Court.
DeSantis has also often turned to the group’s members when making appointments, including to Florida’s Supreme Court.
“I am a member simply for this reason: My grandmother was a sharecropper, so when she came time to harvest her harvest in her family and the landowner shorted her, she had no legal recourse because the judges made the laws,” he said. “And that’s purely unfair. And that stuff’s been going on forever.”
His wide-ranging explanation touched on numerous historical references, without addressing how they factored into his Federalist Society membership.
“Those judges, those purposeless judges that brought you Jim Crow, have authorized the imprisonment of Japanese Americans, have told American citizens they’re not American citizens, they’re Samoan Islanders, because they’re too different,” he said. “Those same judges have also allowed the removal of women’s rights to even have babies because they have babies out of wedlock. So I don’t believe in that type of system. That system is unfair, it’s unjust.”
The society says that it prefers a textualist and originalist interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, rather than for judges to interpret the law. Bain seemed to refer to that ideology before finishing his response.
“It’s unjust that somebody would not know what the law is before they showed up in court,” he said. “That seems to be an unfair process that you can’t, we cannot sustain in our society.”
Bain hails from Pompano Beach and attended Blanche Ely High School before playing offensive line for the Miami Hurricanes. He played in 10 games as a redshirt freshman in 2004, started once as a sophomore in 2005 and was the starting left guard for the full 2006 season, according to the UM Athletics website.
He graduated from UM that year with a degree in psychology.
In an interview posted on the UM website, Bain said he hoped his journey to the judicial bench could inspire kids like him from communities like his Pompano Beach neighborhood.
“My dad grew up in Florida City and Homestead, working the fields and doing things like that,” Bain said. “Then a generation later, he has a son that went to college, graduated from college, got a doctorate degree in law, became a practicing attorney and is now a judge. There’s no way my grandmother could even dream about something like that or my grandparents at all.”
He pledged to be fair and understanding as a judge.
“There’s nobody perfect in the world,” he said. “We’ve all made terrible mistakes. We’re all definitely sinners. But, you’re going to get a fair judge. You’re going to get somebody that’s going to faithfully apply the law as written. You’re going to get somebody that’s dedicated to the interest of the community and the betterment of that community.”
