Title: Boan v. Fla. Fifth District Court of Appeal Judicial Nominating Comm'n v. Fla. Sixth District Court of Appeal Judicial Nominating Comm'n

State: florida

Issuer: Florida Supreme Court

Document:

Supreme Court of Florida 
 
____________ 
 
No. SC22-1557 
____________ 
 
WHITNEY BOAN, 
Petitioner, 
 
vs. 
 
FLORIDA FIFTH DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL JUDICIAL 
NOMINATING COMMISSION, et al., 
Respondents. 
____________ 
 
No. SC22-1558 
____________ 
 
GERALDINE F. THOMPSON, etc., 
Petitioners, 
 
vs. 
 
FLORIDA SIXTH DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL JUDICIAL 
NOMINATING COMMISSION, et al., 
Respondents. 
____________ 
 
December 15, 2022 
 
MUÑIZ, C.J. 
 
 
When a judicial vacancy is to be filled by appointment, the 
Florida Constitution requires a judicial nominating commission to 
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certify nominees for the governor’s consideration.  Here, in 
connection with pending judicial vacancies, two judicial nominating 
commissions certified nominees who did not at the time of their 
nominations reside in the territorial jurisdiction of the applicable 
court.  The petitioners in these consolidated cases allege that the 
nomination of nonresident candidates violated the Florida 
Constitution and the commissions’ own rules of procedure.  As a 
remedy, the petitioners ask us to issue writs of quo warranto 
invalidating the nominations of the disputed candidates, leaving the 
Governor to make his appointments from among the remaining 
nominees.  We deny the petitions. 
I. 
 
Through its enactment of chapter 2022-163, Laws of Florida, 
the Legislature created a new, sixth district court of appeal and 
made corresponding changes to the boundaries of the existing First, 
Second, and Fifth District Courts of Appeal.  That same legislation 
also authorized several new judgeships, effective January 1, 2023, 
for the reconfigured Fifth District Court of Appeal and the new Sixth 
District Court of Appeal.  To begin the process of filling those 
vacancies—four in the Fifth District and three in the Sixth 
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District—the Governor asked each district’s judicial nominating 
commission to convene and to submit nominees for his 
consideration.  See art. V, § 11(a), Fla. Const. (“Whenever a vacancy 
occurs in a judicial office to which election for retention applies, the 
governor shall fill the vacancy by appointing for a term . . . one of 
not fewer than three persons nor more than six persons nominated 
by the appropriate judicial nominating commission.”). 
 
The judicial nominating commissions completed their 
respective tasks in October of this year.  It is undisputed that each 
commission’s list of nominees included individuals who did not, at 
the time of nomination, reside in the territorial jurisdiction of the 
court of appointment.  Two of the fifteen nominees for the Fifth 
District vacancies are nonresidents, as are four of the eighteen 
nominees for the Sixth District vacancies. 
 
Roughly one month after the judicial nominating commissions 
certified their lists of nominees, Whitney S. Boan (as to the Fifth 
District) and Geraldine F. Thompson (as to the Sixth District) filed 
separate petitions in this Court seeking a writ of quo warranto 
directed to each judicial nominating commission.  Each petition 
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names as a respondent the applicable judicial nominating 
commission and its chairman in his official capacity. 
The petitioners allege that the inclusion of nonresidents on 
each commission’s list of nominees violated the Florida Constitution 
and the commissions’ rules of procedure.  As relief, the petitioners 
ask this Court to declare that the nomination of nonresidents 
exceeded each commission’s authority and to invalidate the 
disputed nominations, leaving the Governor to make his 
appointments from among the remaining nominees.  We have 
consolidated the petitions because they raise identical legal 
arguments. 
II. 
A. 
We begin with the threshold issues of jurisdiction and 
standing.  Article V, section 3(b)(8) of the Florida Constitution gives 
this Court discretionary jurisdiction to issue writs of quo warranto 
“to state officers and state agencies.”  The writ of quo warranto 
“historically has been used to determine whether a state officer or 
agency has improperly exercised a power or right derived from the 
State.”  Fla. House of Representatives v. Crist, 999 So. 2d 601, 607 
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(Fla. 2008).  These jurisdictional criteria are satisfied here: 
members of Florida’s judicial nominating commissions are state 
officers; the governmental actions at issue—the commissions’ 
certification of nonresident nominees to the Governor—are 
complete; and the petitions allege that the commissions’ actions 
exceeded the authority granted by the Florida Constitution. 
 
The respondents say that, because the Governor has yet to 
make his appointments from among the lists of nominees, the 
petitioners challenge only future action.  According to the 
respondents, the petitioners here seek the equivalent of an 
(unauthorized) advisory opinion.  That is incorrect.  The challenged 
actions (the nomination of nonresident candidates) and the 
requested remedy (the invalidation of those nominations) are 
directed at the judicial nominating commissions, not at the 
Governor. 
 
As to standing, we see a close analogy to cases where this 
Court has recognized “citizen and taxpayer” standing to challenge a 
governor’s alleged noncompliance with constitutional provisions 
regulating the judicial appointment process.  See Thompson v. 
DeSantis, 301 So. 3d 180 (Fla. 2020); Pleus v. Crist, 14 So. 3d 941 
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(Fla. 2009).  Petitioners’ claims are similar in kind, even if directed 
at a different actor in the constitution’s appointment process.  
Assuming the correctness of our precedents on standing in quo 
warranto cases, we conclude that the petitioners’ constitution-
based allegations suffice to establish standing here.  We note that, 
although the Sixth District’s nominating commission contests the 
petitioners’ standing, the commission did not take on the burden of 
establishing that our precedents in analogous cases are “clearly 
erroneous.”  See State v. Poole, 297 So. 3d 487, 507 (Fla. 2020) 
(explaining this Court’s stare decisis criteria). 
B. 
 
Turning to the merits of the petitioners’ constitutional claim, 
we emphasize at the outset that our focus must be on what the 
constitution does and does not require of a judicial nominating 
commission.  It is not our role to sit in judgment of a commission’s 
discretionary choices or to impose our own views of what 
nomination process would be most practical or efficient. 
 
The judicial eligibility criterion at issue here is found in article 
V, section 8 of the Florida Constitution:  “No person shall be eligible 
for office of justice or judge of any court unless the person . . . 
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resides in the territorial jurisdiction of the court.”  The petitioners 
maintain that this provision prevents a judicial nominating 
commission from nominating any candidate who does not reside in 
the territorial jurisdiction of the corresponding court at the time of 
nomination. 
 
We disagree.  First, the text of article V, section 8, on its face 
does not speak to the nomination process, and it does not explicitly 
contain the limitation urged by the petitioners.  Second, article V, 
section 11, which specifies the judicial nominating commissions’ 
role in the appointment process, also does not explicitly contain 
such a limitation.  Instead, article V, section 11(d), mandates a 
separate nominating commission for each district court of appeal, 
without saying anything more specific about the commissions’ 
duties; article V, section 11(a), says only that a commission must 
nominate “not fewer than three persons nor more than six persons” 
per vacancy; and article V, section 11(c), sets forth the deadlines 
within which the commissions must make their nominations.  
Finally, one cannot infer an “eligible at the time of nomination” 
requirement from any constitutional provision in isolation, from the 
structural relationship between article V, sections 8 and 11, or from 
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the relevant provisions’ evident purpose.  Cf. Verizon Md., Inc. v. 
Pub. Serv. Comm’n of Md., 535 U.S. 635, 644 (2002) (“[W]e will not 
presume that the statute means what it neither says nor fairly 
implies.”).  
 
Instead, we think that our holding in Thompson v. DeSantis, 
301 So. 3d 180 (Fla. 2020), points to the correct resolution of the 
petitioners’ constitutional claim.  Thompson involved a different 
article V, section 8, judicial eligibility requirement, namely, that a 
justice of the supreme court have been a member of the Florida Bar 
for the preceding ten years.  That case required us to consider the 
interaction of that requirement with the article V, section 11, 
requirement that the governor “fill [a] judicial vacancy” by making 
an appointment within 60 days of the certification of nominees.  
Reading the relevant provisions in pari materia, and seeking to give 
effect to each, we concluded that “the Bar eligibility requirement 
attaches at the time of appointment.”  Id. at 185.  We said that our 
conclusion followed from the constitutional text’s focus on the 
governor’s obligation to “fill the vacancy” by making an 
appointment, an action which necessarily requires a 
constitutionally eligible nominee. 
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Consistent with our decision in Thompson, we hold that the 
article V, section 8, residency requirement likewise attaches at the 
time of appointment.  Given that the constitution provides for a 60-
day period between a commission’s certification of nominations and 
the gubernatorial appointment deadline, and in the absence of clear 
textual direction to the contrary, we cannot say that the 
constitution imposes an “eligible at the time of nomination” 
requirement.  Rather, we believe that the constitution leaves to the 
commissions’ discretion whether to nominate only candidates who 
are residents at the time of nomination.  In so holding, we note that 
the petitioners here do not allege that it would be impossible for any 
of the disputed nominees to satisfy the constitutional residency 
requirement by the appointment deadline. 
C. 
 
That leaves us with the petitioners’ claim that the judicial 
nominating commissions violated their own rules of procedure by 
nominating nonresident candidates.  See art. V, § 11(d), Fla. Const. 
(“Uniform rules of procedure shall be established by the judicial 
nominating commissions at each level of the court system.”) 
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The petitioners point to sections II, V, and VI of the Uniform 
Rules of Procedure for District Courts of Appeal Judicial 
Nominating Commissions.  Section II says that the commission 
shall not classify an applicant as “ ‘most qualified’ ” unless “the 
commission affirmatively determines that the applicant meets all 
legal requirements for that judicial office.”  Section V says that “[n]o 
nominee shall be recommended to the governor for appointment 
unless the commission finds that the nominee meets all 
constitutional and statutory requirements.”  Section VI says that 
the commission shall select applicants “who meet all legal 
requirements for the judicial office.”  The petitioners emphasize that 
these provisions’ consistent use of the present tense means that a 
commission may not nominate a nonresident candidate in the hope 
or expectation that he or she will become a resident before being 
appointed.  
The respondents in turn maintain that they have not violated 
these rules.  They also suggest that, in any event, it would be 
impermissible for rules of procedure to impose a nominee eligibility 
requirement more stringent than what the constitution demands.  
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Last, the respondents say that the petitioners’ rule-based claim is 
not properly before this Court. 
 
We need not and do not decide the merits of the petitioners’ 
procedural-rule-based claim, because we conclude that the 
commissions’ compliance with their procedural rules is not the 
proper subject of a quo warranto proceeding.  For starters, the 
petitioners have not identified any precedent where this Court 
exercised its discretionary quo warranto jurisdiction to review a 
comparable procedural-rule-based claim.  On the contrary, our 
precedents in this area consistently involved claims that official 
action exceeded limits imposed by the constitution or by a statute. 
Just as important, the uniform procedural rules themselves 
indicate that alleged violations are to be evaluated and dealt with by 
the governor rather than by a court.  Indeed, the rules give the 
governor the sole authority to decide whether a rule violation of the 
kind alleged here has occurred, and if so, what to do about it. 
The relevant rule provisions are contained in Section IX, under 
the title “Misconduct.”  There the rules say:  “A complaint alleging 
the misconduct of a judicial nominating commission chair and one 
or more commissioners of a judicial nominating commission shall 
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be reported in writing to the Governor for action.”  It further says:  
“The Governor shall investigate any complaint if the allegations are 
in writing, signed by the complainant, and deemed sufficient.”  
Then:  “A complaint is sufficient if the Governor determines that it 
contains allegations which if proven would be a violation of these 
rules or reflects discredit on the judicial selection process.”  And 
finally:  “Upon determination of sufficiency each charge may be 
disposed of by the Governor solely, [subject to consultation with 
commission members uninvolved in the disposition or in the alleged 
misconduct.]”  Whatever behavior one might intuitively associate 
with the label “misconduct,” the text says that Section IX applies to 
all alleged rules violations, not just to ethics-related violations. 
Given our quo warranto precedents and the rule provisions we 
have just described, we conclude that the petitioners’ procedural-
rule-based claim is not the proper subject of a quo warranto 
proceeding.  In so holding, we reiterate that we take no position on 
whether the judicial nominating commissions here complied with 
their rules.  Nor do we take up the respondents’ argument that the 
constitution prohibits a procedural rule that disallows nominees 
who are nonresidents at the time of nomination.  Finally, we note 
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that this portion of our analysis is limited to the petitioners’ claim 
that is based solely on alleged noncompliance with the nominating 
commissions’ procedural rules, which we distinguish from the 
petitioners’ constitutional claim.  
III. 
 
Consistent with our decision in Thompson, we hold that the 
constitutional residency requirement for judges attaches at the time 
of appointment—not at the time of nomination.  Therefore, the 
respondent judicial nominating commissions did not exceed their 
constitutional authority by nominating nonresident candidates.  We 
do not reach the merits of the petitioners’ procedural-rule-based 
challenge to the disputed nominations, because alleged 
noncompliance with the nominating commissions’ rules of 
procedure is not the proper subject of a quo warranto proceeding.  
The petitions are denied. 
 
It is so ordered. 
POLSTON and FRANCIS, JJ., and IVAN F. FERNANDEZ, Associate 
Justice, concur. 
LABARGA, J., concurs in part and dissents in part with an opinion. 
CANADY, COURIEL, and GROSSHANS, JJ., recused. 
 
NO MOTION FOR REHEARING WILL BE ALLOWED. 
 
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LABARGA, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part. 
 
I concur with the majority that under this Court’s holding in 
Thompson v. DeSantis, 301 So. 3d 180 (Fla. 2020), the 
constitutional residency requirement attaches at the time of the 
governor’s appointment.  However, as to the petitioners’ argument 
that the judicial nominating commissions violated their own rules 
in nominating nonresident candidates, I strongly disagree with the 
majority’s analysis. 
 
Like the petitioners’ claim that the judicial nominating 
commissions violated the Florida Constitution, the petitioners’ 
rules-based claim is properly before this Court.  However, the 
majority concludes that the petitioners’ rules-based claim is not 
appropriately considered in this quo warranto proceeding.  The 
majority reaches this conclusion despite the fact that the rule-
making authority of the judicial nominating commissions is derived 
from the Florida Constitution.  Under article V, section 11(d) of the 
Florida Constitution, “[u]niform rules of procedure shall be 
established by the judicial nominating commissions at each level of 
the court system.”  This constitutional authority is essential to 
properly invoking this Court’s quo warranto jurisdiction. 
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What is more, under the majority’s interpretation of the 
Uniform Rules of Procedure for District Court of Appeal Judicial 
Nominating Commissions, the majority concludes that the 
petitioners’ rules-based claim is properly brought before the 
governor and not this Court.  This Court, in fact, has the 
constitutional authority under article V, section 11(d) to repeal all 
or part of those very rules: “Such rules, or any part thereof, may be 
repealed by general law enacted by a majority vote of the 
membership of each house of the legislature, or by the supreme 
court, five justices concurring.”  (Emphasis added.)  Surely then, this 
Court is the appropriate body to consider whether the respondent 
judicial nominating commissions violated their own rules. 
 
Because the petitioners’ claim properly falls under this Court’s 
quo warranto jurisdiction, I cannot agree with the majority’s 
interpretation on this issue.  Thus, I dissent in part. 
Original Proceeding – Quo Warranto 
 
William R. Ponall and Eric J. Sorice of Ponall Law, Maitland, 
Florida; and Lisabeth J. Fryer and Laura Cepero of Lisabeth J. 
Fryer, P.A., Sanford, Florida, 
 
for Petitioners, Whitney Boan, and Geraldine F. Thompson, in 
her Official Capacity as a Senator in the Florida Senate 
 
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Kenneth B. Bell of Gunster, Yoakley & Stewart, P.A., Tallahassee, 
Florida, and Joseph W. Jacquot of Gunster, Yoakley & Stewart, 
P.A., Jacksonville, Florida, 
 
for Respondents, Florida Fifth District Court of Appeal Judicial 
Nominating Commission, et al. 
 
Mayanne Downs and Jason A. Zimmerman of GrayRobinson, P.A, 
Orlando, Florida; and Michael A. Sasso of Sasso & Sasso, P.A., 
Winter Park, Florida, 
 
for Respondents, Florida Sixth District Court of Appeal 
Judicial Nominating Commission, et al.