Ron DeSantis credits stacked Supreme Court with State Attorney removals

In the case of legal disputes, it’s good to pick the Judges.

That’s what Gov. Ron DeSantis argues during an interview with friendly Mark Levin that airs Saturday on Fox News. DeSantis says his decision to suspend and replace Democratic State Attorneys Andrew Warren and Monique Worrell from office in the 13th and 9th Judicial Circuits, respectively, wouldn’t have happened if figures like federal Judge Jeb Boasberg were on the Florida Supreme Court.

“I removed them from their posts and they sued in the Florida Supreme Court and they lost in the Florida Supreme Court,” DeSantis said.

“If we were in a situation where you have people like this Boasberg and these liberal Justices, if they were the ones to pass judgment on my use of my constitutional executive authority, there is no way they would have upheld anything I was doing.”

DeSantis discussed being able to replace three Justices in his first month in office, which “transformed the court” from “4-to-3 liberal to 6-to-1 conservative.”

“And clearly I’m appointing people who understand the text history and structure of the Constitution. They’re not legislating from the bench, and they are going to apply the law as it’s written,” DeSantis said.

The Democratic State Attorneys were removed for “neglect of duty” in Warren’s case and “neglecting her duty to faithfully prosecute crime in her jurisdiction” in Worrell’s.

Warren lost his election to return to office in 2024, while Worrell won hers. Thus far, the Governor has allowed her to stay in place.

Potential suspension of noncompliant elected officials isn’t just limited to State Attorneys. In Fort Myers and Jacksonville, where there has been some dispute about immigration law, DeSantis and Attorney General James Uthmeier point to the state’s power to rein in subsidiary governments.

Even though DeSantis has largely benefited from picking Judges who agree with him in theory, it hasn’t always paid off in practice in the way he described to Levin.

DeSantis and Secretary of State Cord Byrd struck out when attempting to disqualify Rep. Debbie Mayfield from the Special Election for Senate District 19 to replace Sen. Randy Fine, who is a current candidate for Congress.

The high court rejected the executive branch’s argument that because Mayfield had served two full eight-year terms in the Senate that ended after the November 2024 election, she was ineligible to run.

The Justices ruled that Mayfield’s filing “met the statutory requirements” and that she had “a clear legal right to appear on the primary ballot.”

DeSantis also balked at the Supreme Court’s approval of 2024’s failed citizen initiative intended to rollback recent restrictions on the abortion.

“That was a 4-to-3 decision. My view is that the language is very confusing,” DeSantis told Sean Hannity last year.

DeSantis, who has suggested removing judgeships on the federal level as a way of dealing with inconvenient rulings like those from Boasberg, has complained at length about the U.S. Supreme Court as well.

He said earlier this month that a 5-4 SCOTUS decision siding with a lower court Judge objecting to Trump’s desire to stop USAID foreign aid was a “missed … huge opportunity to put a stop to rogue district courts interfering with executive branch operations.”

DeSantis has also complained about how the court isn’t far right enough for him.

“The three liberal Justices, they’re always going to be against no matter what. And then of the six others, you know, a lot of them aren’t reliable,” he said, citing Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito as exceptions.

DeSantis’ critiques have extended to all Trump appointees. The Governor went after Brett Kavanaugh, who, after his confirmation, opted to “go left,” and Neil Gorsuch, who DeSantis said was even worse.

He also included Amy Coney Barrett in the mix, telling Hugh Hewitt that while he respects “the three appointees he did … none of those three are at the same level” as Alito and Thomas.

DeSantis is also lukewarm on the Chief Justice, he said when running for President.

“If you replace a Clarence Thomas with somebody like a John Roberts or somebody like that, then you’re going to actually see the court move to the left, and you can’t do that,” DeSantis said.

As a presidential candidate, he said he expected the President this term to be able to replace up to four Justices and create a path to a “7-2” conservative majority.

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