Just another article about how fucked up Florida is

[In It to Win It]

Fort Myers News Press

Governors and presidents come and go, hanging around for four, maybe eight years. But the judges they appoint are here for much longer -- and the constitutional changes they make last for decades, sometimes generations.

For example, more than four decades ago, Floridians amended their Constitution to protect personal privacy. A few years later, the Supreme Court ruled, not surprisingly, that the right to privacy protected women’s access to abortion care.

Based on this constitutional guarantee, the Florida Supreme Court held that legislative restrictions impeding women’s access to abortion were “presumptively unconstitutional.” Floridians have not changed their Constitution, but Gov. DeSantis changed the membership of the Court. And the new Court allowed a 15-week ban (with no exceptions for rape or incest) to take effect while pondering its constitutionality.

In 2010, Floridians had enough of routine legislative manipulation of the electoral process and adopted Fair District Amendments to end partisan and racial gerrymandering of legislative and congressional districts.

Following the 2020 Census, Gov. DeSantis pressured the Legislature to adopt a new map that abolished two Black congressional districts despite the amendment’s requirement that “districts shall not be drawn with the intent or result of denying or abridging the equal opportunity of racial or language minorities to participate in the political process or to diminish their ability to elect representatives of their choice.”

[Hortensis]

1. All examples of a state supreme court REVERSING decisions made by the people

directly or in response to societal change in order to IMPOSE regressive Republican Party policies on people who rejected them.

If ONLY it was only happening there and not in red states across the nation.

Over 2 dozen states have conservative, Republican-affiliated majorities on their high courts. Plus, Republicans just gained additional conservative power in two more state courts in in the midterms -- Ohio and North Carolina. NC was just flipped from a 4-3 liberal supreme court majority to 5-2 Republican Party-serving conservative majority. (Liberals retained control of the IL and MI supreme courts.)

As we're able to block the Republicans' narrow majority in the house, Republican ideologues will turn to red state legislatures and courts even more to impose agendas their voters oppose.

So we'll be seeing more of this, and more voters in those states will also be seeing and taking it personally.

[In It to Win It]

2. To be fair to Ohio

They already had a GOP majority on the state Supreme Court. They just replaced a moderate Republican Chief Justice who upheld the constitutional ban on gerrymandering with a pure right-wing nut job for a Chief Justice who doesn’t care about the constitutional ban on gerrymandering.

[Hortensis]

3. :) Right. They shifted power among the existing justices,

plus I guess the Republican governor gets to appoint a replacement for the seat vacated by your new pure RW nut job chief justice.

I read somewhere that this election OH's ballot listed party affiliation for justices, so people voted "informed" to that degree at least.

[In It to Win It]

4. Yes, Ohio has partisan supreme court elections

I've been wondering now that the incoming Chief Justice will leave her current seat vacant, how will that be filled. It seems like you just answered that question that I've been having for a couple of months now. The governor is appointing her replacement who will serve out the rest of her current term.

[Hortensis]

5. Well, the people chose and have Republicans across the board.

We could use a word for states where an anti-democracy party controlls the governorship, both legislative houses, and the high court.