Court Scorches Florida's Troll AG

Bro, do you even law?

Yesterday a federal judge found Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier in contempt of court.

“Litigants cannot change the plain meaning of words as it suits them, especially when conveying a court’s clear and unambiguous order,” Judge Kathleen Williams wrote incredulously. “Fidelity to the rule of law can have no other meaning.”

The order is both scathing and incredulous. The judge seems genuinely gobsmacked at the display of open defiance by an officer of the court who is also the chief law enforcement official in the state of Florida. Uthmeier’s behavior was openly contemptuous — in both the legal and colloquial sense of the word — and his defense was simply ridiculous.

The case involved Florida Senate Bill 4-C, which purported to criminalize “illegal entry by an adult unauthorized alien into this state,” with escalating penalties for “illegal reentry.” The Supreme Court has been very clear that regulating immigration is the exclusive province of the federal government, and thus state are barred from crafting their own border schemes under the Supremacy Clause. That’s why courts from Idaho to Oklahoma have enjoined identical laws, and a similar Florida statute was blocked last year by Judge Roy Altman, a Trump appointee. So it could hardly have been surprising to AG Uthmeier when Judge Williams issued a temporary restraining order on April 4, finding that “States are preempted under the Supremacy Clause from regulating conduct in a field that Congress, acting within its proper authority, has determined must be regulated by its exclusive governance.”

On April 18, the judge extended the TRO, making clear that she would soon issue a preliminary injunction. She also ordered AG Uthmeier to “provide actual notice of the TRO to all named Defendants and their officers, agents, employees, attorneys, and any person who is in active concert or participation with them and who has not already received actual notice.”

At first, Uthmeier complied. On April 18, he sent out a letter to all Florida law enforcement agencies attaching a copy of the TRO and advising the recipients that the court had ordered them to comply with it. The AG grumbled that the order was “wrong on the merits and overbroad in its scope” and expressed his belief that the judge had no authority to bind the cops, who were not parties to the case. But he concluded by telling the agency leaders of Florida law enforcement agencies to “Please instruct your officers and agents to comply with Judge Williams' directives.”

But on April 23, Uthmeier sent another letter “to provide an update.” That update turned out to be that, on reflection, Uthmeier really, really disagreed with Judge Williams.

“Judge Williams ordered my office to notify you of the evolving scope of her order, and I did so,” he wrote. “But I cannot prevent you from enforcing §§ 811.102 and 811.103,” — those being the sections of Senate Bill 4-C that Judge Williams enjoined — “where there remains no judicial order that properly restrains you from doing so. As set forth in the brief my office filed today, it is my view that no lawful, legitimate order currently impedes your agencies from continuing to enforce Florida's new illegal entry and reentry laws.”

Telling cops and sheriffs to violate a court order is A BOLD STRATEGY, COTTON. As was Uthmeier’s decision to go on a conservative media tour to explain that he absolutely did intend for Florida cops to arrest people under a statute that had just been declared unconstitutional.