Every election cycle, Floridians are asked to vote on whether they believe judges on the state’s highest courts deserve to stay on the bench.
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Yet many Floridians are clueless about how to cast an informed vote. Many don’t even try. In fact, more than a million Floridians who fill out ballots usually leave these “merit retention” questions blank.
That’s understandable. It can be tough to judge judges — especially since some of the groups that used to help voters assess judicial job performances have stopped doing so. (More on that in a moment.)
Fortunately, newspapers still take this part of democracy seriously. And the Orlando Sentinel’s editorial board has issued a thoughtful split decision this year.
Now, I’m not part of the editorial board. Heck, I don’t even always agree with those folks. But I do take their guidance seriously, especially on judges.
And this year, the ed board has concluded that three judges deserve to stay, and one needs to go.
All were appointed by Republican governors. The only one the ed board wants to boot is Supreme Court Justice Carlos Muñiz.
I agree. And that’s not something I say lightly. In fact, I wrote columns for this newspaper for nearly two decades without ever recommending voters remove a judge from office. Muñiz was the first.
That was in 2020, during Muñiz’s first merit-retention vote after Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed him. And my reasons were simple: He had a disturbing, anti-consumer record, and his own peers in the legal profession gave him the lowest marks.
Muñiz, you see, used to work for Pam Bondi when she was Florida’s attorney general. And whenever another scandal popped up — and boy, did they with Bondi — Muñiz, her chief of staff and deputy A.G. at the time, seemed to be in the thick of it.
Why I’m voting ‘No’ on Florida Supreme Court Justice Carlos Muñiz | Commentary
For starters, Muñiz was involved in one of Bondi’s earliest scandals when her office ousted the state’s two top mortgage fraud investigators. These were two pit bull attorneys who’d stood up to companies wrongly trying to kick Floridians out of their homes. But then the mortgage companies complained (yes, about the people investigating them), and records showed Muñiz helped justify their oustings.
Then there was Bondi’s most infamous scandal when she took $25,000 in campaign cash from Donald Trump and decided not to pursue complaints from Floridians who said they’d been scammed by Donald Trump’s alleged money-making venture, “Trump University.” Muñiz helped defend the office’s inaction — even though New York’s attorney general acted on similar complaints in that state and netted a $25 million settlement for victims there.
Does this sound like the kind of guy you want making decisions about whether insurance companies, mortgage companies or predatory scammers can run roughshod over consumers?
Also, Muñiz’s own peers in the legal profession gave him the of any judge in the 2020 merit-retention survey conducted by the Florida Bar.
All judges received relatively high scores, ranging from 71% support for retention to 90%, suggesting the majority of attorneys thought they should all stay in office. But Muñiz was at the bottom at 71%.
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After those results went public, embarrassing Muñiz and a few other judges, the Florida Bar stopped conducting surveys and publishing the results … leaving Florida voters with even fewer resources.
But the editorial boards of both the Orlando Sentinel and South Florida Sun Sentinel have continued to watch this supreme court for the past six years. And they both concluded change is needed with the Sentinel’s editorial board saying: “No Supreme Court has ever shown such disrespect for Floridians, or done such damage to basic human rights, consumer protections and fundamental safeguards against corruption and political manipulation.”
Endorsement: Support justice by retiring this Supreme Court judge
Specifically, the board noted that Muñiz was part of the court that abdicated its responsibility to stop Gov. Ron DeSantis’ scheme to gerrymander congressional districts in clear violation of this state’s constitution.
The board also chided Muñiz for rescinding privacy protections previously guaranteed to Floridians as part of a “shifty legal strategy to rationalize stripping away a woman’s fundamental right to control her own body.”
There was a lot more you can read in the piece: “Support justice by retiring this Supreme Court judge.”
By comparison, the ed board recommended keeping all three Rick Scott-appointed judges up for retention in the Fifth District Court of Appeal. The board said John M. Harris, Scott Makar and F. Rand Wallis all deserved to keep their posts in the district that covers 13 counties, including Lake, Seminole, Brevard and Volusia.
Endorsement: Retain trio of appeal-court judges
Obviously not everyone agrees on Muñiz. As soon as the editorial board issued its recommendation, a number of attorneys rushed to Muñiz’s defense. A trio of recent Florida Bar presidents said they found him to be “intellectually honest and reasonable.” Another local attorney described him in a letter to the editor as “beyond reproach.”
I think the record clearly shows otherwise. There’s plenty reproachable about helping oust investigators who were trying to take on fraudulent mortgage companies.
And there’s little reasonable about looking the other way when residents say they’re being swindled or when the state’s constitution is being violated.
Muniz did show independence when he allowed a citizen amendment on abortion access to get on the state ballot, even though GOP party leaders wanted it off. But such votes have been rare. Also, arguments to deny citizens the chance to vote should’ve never been seriously considered.
For the record, I doubt Florida voters will toss any judge out of office on a merit-retention vote this year. Why? Because voters never have. Not once. Most voters either don’t want — or don’t feel qualified — to do so.
As a result, Florida voters have returned every judge who has ever faced a retention vote to the bench, regardless of whether they were a Democrat or Republican and whether they were model jurists or connected to scandal.
But as long as the state is asking me whether I want Muñiz to keep his post, I’ve seen and read more than enough to know I don’t.
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