Fired by DeSantis, Florida Prosecutors Seek Jobs and Discretion

Two progressive prosecutors removed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis are fighting to get their jobs back on Tuesday.

Andrew Warren and Monique Worrell, both of whom DeSantis said refused to enforce the state’s laws, are asking voters to reinstate them as Thirteenth and Ninth Judicial District State Attorneys, respectively. It’s not clear whether, if reelected, DeSantis will remove them again. In comments at a public roundtable, DeSantis indicated that he’d consider it.

DeSantis’ actions have created a possible roadmap for Donald Trump and other conservative governors battling locally-elected liberal prosecutors, national criminal law leaders say.

“We’re the only country in the world that elects prosecutors—it’s a truly American thing,” said John Choi, co-chair of the American Bar Association Prosecutorial Independence Taskforce. The discretion of those local prosecutors is being challenged more and more, he said.

Legislators in 27 states have filed bills that would make it easier for governors to remove local prosecutors, triggering debates in Texas, Georgia, and Tennessee. Lawmakers and governors in those states are seeking to crack down on law enforcers with differing views on abortion, criminal diversion, bail, and political prosecution, said Ellen Yaroshefsky, Choi’s co-chair.

“The whole concept that we need to take discretion away from prosecutors and need to just enforce the law—it’s meaningless,” Warren said in an interview, adding that he wouldn’t back down on abortion if reelected. “As an American I don’t need a permission slip to exercise my constitutional rights” to free speech.

Some conservatives say the US Justice Department should sue local attorneys who “deny American citizens the ‘equal protection of the laws’ by refusing to prosecute criminal offenses in their jurisdictions,’” with federal officials pursuing cases local attorneys won’t bring, Gene Hamilton, former counselor to the US attorney general under Trump, wrote in his section of Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.

But continuing further down this path could send shock waves through America’s justice system, Yaroshefsky said, if prosecutors of all political backgrounds think first about how to keep their jobs when they should be focused on protecting their communities.

“There must be better lines of demarcation,” she added, “otherwise we’re just stepping on local voters’ rights.”

Pledge and Punishment

In the days following the June 2022 US Supreme Court decision eliminating a federal right to abortion, dozens of elected prosecutors across the country pledged not to enforce abortion-related crimes in their jurisdictions, including Tampa’s Warren.

The pledge inflamed a national debate and launched several lawsuits testing the gray areas where executive power and free speech collide.

DeSantis removed Warren by executive order in response on Aug. 4, 2022. “Warren’s neglect of duty is willful and intended to be a ‘functional veto’ on the policies of the Florida Legislature,” he said.

A year later, DeSantis took the same action against Orlando’s Worrell. She wasn’t a signatory to the pledge but ran for office on progressive policies seeking to expand diversion programs and enhance pre-trial release for criminal defendants. DeSantis called her policies, which reduced jail populations, “both neglect of duty and incompetence.”

Both Warren and Worrell took their cases to the Florida Supreme Court and lost. Federal lawsuits also haven’t gone their way either. A federal appeals court ruled DeSantis violated Warren’s First Amendment rights, but a federal trial court declined to reinstate him. Voters backing Worrell had their case sidelined with struggles to achieve standing.

DeSantis defenders argue that Worrell’s policies led to pre-released defendants committing violent crimes, and Warren’s outright stance that he wouldn’t enforce the law gave DeSantis little choice but to remove him to uphold the state’s criminal justice system.

“These folks stood in the public square, thumbed their nose at the executive of Florida and said I’m not going to do my job,” said Jamie Miller, a long-time Florida Republican consultant and former state party executive director. “If they want to be legislators they should run for legislative office.

Cash-Fueled Clash

The reelection races for Warren and Worrell have driven massive spending. The cash flowing into these two races together is more than four times the rest of Florida’s 20 prosecutor races combined.

Backers of DeSantis’ replacement for Warren, Suzy Lopez, have spent $2.1 million on ads touting her qualifications as a career-prosecutor-turned judge with a great working relationship with law enforcement. Those ads are outspending Warren nearly 10-to-1, as his ads target Lopez’s appointment by DeSantis.

The figures are similar in the Ninth Judicial District, where groups supporting Andrew A. Bain, the DeSantis appointee running as an independent, have dumped $2.3 million into ads criticizing Worrell’s liberal policies. Worrell’s camp has spent $137,000 on ads linking Bain to DeSantis.

Worrell’s opponent focuses on the policies DeSantis cited when he removed her.

Source: AdImpact

Lopez, who grew up in the Tampa area, said in an interview she hopes voters decide based on her record—reducing crime and repairing relationships with local law enforcement frustrated with Warren’s charging priorities—rather than how she got to office. She places a high emphasis on victim communication and broadening the kinds of lower-level crimes the offices addresses.

“The stuff between the governor and my predecessor is between them,” she said. “I just do the job.”

If Warren and Worrell were to win, and be ejected again, that could reverberate beyond the state’s few Democratic prosecutors, said Melba Pearson, Director of Prosecution Projects for Florida International University and the chair-elect of the American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Section.

“People would come away thinking, why should I vote? My vote doesn’t matter,” she said. “If this becomes the norm, we’re going to lose legitimacy.”