Jim Rosica
A measure filed Friday would limit Florida’s appellate judges and Supreme Court justices to 12 years on the bench. It’s the first formal initiative to come out of House Speaker-Designate Richard Corcoran‘s policy playbook.
The joint resolution (SJR 322) was filed by a state senator, Elkton Republican Travis Hutson.
State Rep. John Wood, a Winter Haven Republican, filed the House companion measure Thursday.
Hutson said he started working on the language with Wood this summer: “We decided it was unfair to place term limits on two branches of government and not on the third.”
When asked why he didn’t also limit elected county and circuit judges, he said that those judges can face competition at the ballot box. (In practice, though, incumbent judges often don’t have challengers.)
In Florida, appellate judges and justices are appointed by the governor, then sit for yes-or-no “merit retention” elections first instituted in the mid-1970s. Since then, no judge has lost a retention vote.
The measures would create a constitutional amendment requiring approval by 60 percent of voters. The proposed ballot title is “Term Limits for Appellate Courts,” including the state Supreme Court.
“They currently serve unlimited 6-year terms, if retained, until (the mandatory retirement age of) 70,” the ballot summary reads. “This amendment would limit them to two full terms. A partial term would not count toward the limit. This amendment applies to current justices and judges.”
The judicial term-limit idea also is in an 86-page policy paper written by Corcoran and other House members that calls for a new “legislative culture of purpose.”
Other reforms include an extension of the ban on lobbying by former lawmakers to five or six years from the current two.
But Hutson said it was “pure coincidence” that the substance of his bill was in that white paper and in the speech Corcoran gave Wednesday afternoon after his designation.
“He gave me a copy of it once but I never read it because I misplaced it,” Hutson said.
Hutson was in the House with Corcoran from 2012 to 2015 before being elected to the seat vacated by former Sen. John Thrasher on becoming president of Florida State University.
Corcoran said he’s had “tons of conversations” about his proposals.
“These are really ‘House’ ideas, not ‘Richard’ ideas,” he said. “And a lot of them were well received in the Senate … I think you’ll start seeing a lot” of bills based on his priorities.
“I like to think you can’t defeat a great idea,” Corcoran said.
Corcoran this week was elected speaker for the 2016-18 term, succeeding current Speaker Steve Crisafulli.
Corcoran, first elected in 2010, gave a speech in which he called for several new policies, such as a 12-year limit for appeals-court judges.
“No public office – be it state representative, governor or judge – should be for life,” Corcoran said in his prepared remarks.
He later said the idea was not spurred by disagreement by the Republican-controlled Legislature with the Supreme Court over what they perceive to be the overly liberal interpretations of law by most of its justices.
That majority is usually Chief Justice Jorge Labarga and justices R. Fred Lewis, Barbara J. Pariente, James E.C. Perry, Peggy A. Quince.
Of those, Lewis, Pariente and Quince face mandatory retirement in 2019, according to the court’s website. Perry must retire in 2017 and Labarga will sit for a retention vote next year.
