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How a President DeSantis could reshape federal courts
The White House hopeful worked with former President Donald Trump's judicial adviser to add conservative justices to Florida's highest court.
CLIMATEWIRE — During his four years in the Florida governor’s mansion, Ron DeSantis has orchestrated a complete makeover of the Sunshine State’s court system.
If he wins the White House in November 2024 — an ambition he formally announced last week — DeSantis is expected to make a similar mark on the federal bench. He would follow in the footsteps of former President Donald Trump, who during his four years in office installed record numbers of judges and solidified the Supreme Court’s conservative majority for decades to come.
“DeSantis has been working diligently in Florida to fill as many judicial benches as he can with very conservative jurists,” said Mac Stipanovich, a former GOP political strategist in Florida. “I wouldn’t expect him to do anything else in D.C.”
Since becoming governor in 2019, DeSantis has appointed scores of state judges, including seven Florida Supreme Court justices who have shifted the bench toward the right. Two of his picks to serve on Florida’s highest court — Barbara Lagoa and Robert Luck — have already moved on to federal judgeships.
DeSantis celebrated his judicial accomplishments during a Tuesday speech in Iowa.
“When I became governor, we inherited maybe the most liberal state Supreme Court anywhere in the country," he said. "Well, I’ve since then appointed seven conservative justices, and we now have the most conservative state Supreme Court in the country.”
He warned against the dangers of a Democratic sweep of the White House and both chambers of Congress in 2024.
"They will pack the U.S. Supreme Court, and they will erase the conservative majority that is currently on the Supreme Court," DeSantis said.
With Democrats in both the House and Senate in 2021, President Joe Biden established a bipartisan commission to study, among other things, progressive proposals to add more seats to the Supreme Court, diluting the current six-justice conservative majority. He did not pursue court expansion.
DeSantis accomplished his goals for the Florida courts with the help of Leonard Leo, Trump’s judicial adviser and the co-chair of the conservative Federalist Society. Leo was among the people who interviewed DeSantis’ Florida Supreme Court nominees, some of whom were Federalist Society members.
Stipanovich, now a registered Democrat who has been a vocal critic of the Republican Party since Trump’s election, said he would expect any DeSantis judicial appointee to hold an anti-abortion viewpoint and an expansive view of executive power.
As Florida governor, DeSantis has backed policies that defy the bounds of the Constitution, rolling the dice that he’ll be able to secure favorable rulings from sympathetic judges, said Stipanovich.
“And he frequently does in the Florida court system,” Stipanovich said.
The DeSantis campaign did not respond to questions about the candidate's plans for the federal courts.
Any Republican candidate who wins the White House in 2024 and hopes to make a mark on the federal courts would also need to flip the Senate, where Democrats currently hold a narrow majority. The chamber is responsible for confirming judges and Supreme Court justices.
If he is elected president, DeSantis might be expected to pay more careful attention to the racial and gender diversity of his judicial nominees than Trump did, said Jonathan Adler, a law professor at the Case Western Reserve University.
Diversifying the federal bench has been a key focus for President Joe Biden, who, among other appointments, named the first Black woman to the Supreme Court.
“I would think that there would be some attention to that in a DeSantis administration or any Republican administration if we have one after 2024,” said Adler.
DeSantis appears to have taken the judicial philosophy of his nominees “very seriously,” Adler said.
“My understanding is that it’s really been a priority to be very deliberate and careful about the sorts of folks that get put on courts” under DeSantis, said Adler.
Judicial picks will be important no matter who sits in the White House on Jan. 20, 2025, Adler said.
“Who knows if there will be Supreme Court openings, but there will be lower court openings,” he said, “and we know that the lower court nominations and appointments matter.”
DeSantis picks in federal court
One of DeSantis’ Florida judicial appointees made an appearance on Donald Trump’s Supreme Court shortlist in 2020 when the former president had a chance to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Trump eventually tapped Amy Coney Barrett instead, but former Florida Supreme Court Justice Lagoa — who now serves as a federal judge — could land on DeSantis’ list of high court contenders if he wins the White House and has a chance to choose a justice.
During confirmation proceedings in 2019 for her seat on the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Lagoa refused to acknowledge science on humankind’s impact on rising global temperatures.
“As a sitting justice on the Florida Supreme Court and a judicial nominee, it would be inappropriate for me to state my views on this issue as it might be the subject of pending or future litigation,” Lagoa wrote in response to a question from Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California.
Feinstein, who was at the time the highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, also grilled Lagoa on a conversation she had with Leo in 2018 ahead of her arrival on the Florida Supreme Court.
“What questions did Leonard Leo ask you in his interview with you?” Feinstein asked. “How did you answer?”
Lagoa said she did not remember the specific questions Leo asked and did not know how he landed on the panel of interviewees. She offered similar answers when asked whether Leo’s group — the Federalist Society, of which Lagoa has been a member since 1998 — had questioned her views on administrative law.
She said she was familiar with key administrative law principles, such as the Chevron doctrine, the nearly 40-year-old legal precedent that says courts should generally defer to federal agency’s interpretation of their authority under ambiguous laws.
The Supreme Court has recently signaled that it may be prepared to overturn or at least limit the reach of the doctrine in its upcoming term — a decision that would have an enormous impact on the ability of agencies like EPA to defend environmental rules in court. Shortly after announcing his run for president, DeSantis said the Chevron doctrine should be overruled.
Lagoa said of the doctrine in 2019: “If confirmed, I would fully and faithfully apply Supreme Court precedent on administrative law.”
Reporters Robin Bravender, Lesley Clark and Minho Kim contributed.
