Three days after Monique Worrell was re-elected, a federal judge on Friday dismissed a lawsuit challenging Gov. Ron DeSantis’ controversial 2023 decision to suspend her as state attorney in Orange and Osceola counties.
U.S. District Judge Julie Sneed issued a 20-page decision dismissing a lawsuit brought by two Worrell supporters and the group Florida Rising, alleging that the suspension violated voters’ due process and First Amendment rights.
The ruling made no mention of Tuesday’s election, in which Worrell, a Democrat, easily defeated Andrew Bain to retain the position of state attorney in the 9th Judicial Circuit.
In August 2023, DeSantis issued an executive order suspending Worrell, who was first elected in 2020, and appointed Bain to replace her.
Among other things, the executive order claimed that Worrell’s policies prevented or discouraged assistant state attorneys from seeking minimum mandatory sentences for gun and drug trafficking offenses.
The legal challenge was filed in November 2023 by voters David Caicedo and Rajib Chowdhury, as well as Florida Rising. After Sneed dismissed the initial version of the lawsuit in May, the plaintiffs’ attorneys filed a revised version, alleging that Worrell’s suspension disenfranchised voters.
“Governor DeSantis abrogated plaintiffs’ associational and expressional First Amendment rights when he abused the suspension authority accorded to him under Florida law,” according to the revised lawsuit.
However, in granting DeSantis’ motion to dismiss the case on Friday, Sneed ruled in part that Caicedo and Chowdhury lacked legal standing to challenge the suspension.
She stated that the voters and members of Florida Rising “have failed to allege an invasion of a legally protected interest in defendant’s (DeSantis’) removal of Ms. Worrell from her position pursuant to the Florida Constitution.”
“Their injury is a result of Ms. Worrell’s own injury in being removed, and as voters who cast successful ballots for her, they do not demonstrate that they had any legally protectable interest in her remaining in office throughout her term. … Furthermore, Mr. Caicedo, Mr. Chowdhury, and Florida Rising members have failed to allege any specific injury other than being among the 400,000 people who voted for Ms. Worrell,” wrote Sneed, who was nominated to the federal bench by President Joe Biden.
Sneed stated that Florida Rising established standing by alleging that it had to divert resources in response to Worrell’s suspension. However, she ruled against voting rights and the organizing group on constitutional grounds.
“Plaintiffs frame defendant’s conduct as a Fourteenth Amendment violation of the ‘fundamental right to an effective vote,’ arguing that the votes cast for Ms. Worrell were rendered ineffective when defendant removed her from office before the end of her term,” he wrote. “However, the votes cast for Ms. Worrell were effective because Ms. Worrell assumed office after being elected.”
Worrell and her supporters contested DeSantis’s reasons for suspending her. For instance, the complaint alleged that by “following through on her campaign promises to reform the criminal legal system, Ms. Worrell was doing nothing other than meeting her professional and ethical obligations and exercising her prosecutorial discretion.”
Worrell won with approximately 57.5% of the vote on Tuesday, defeating Bain, a former Orange County judge who ran without party affiliation.
