TAMPA, Fla. -On Tuesday afternoon, the case to remove former state attorney Andrew Warren from his job will go to a federal appeals court in Alabama.
It’s the latest step in a court fight that started in August when Governor Ron DeSantis fired Warren and said the twice-elected Hillsborough State Attorney had not done his job.
Before he was fired, Warren signed pledges saying he wouldn’t go after people who wanted or gave abortions or gender-affirming cases.
Warren has said that he has never dealt with a case regarding either of these topics, and he has called his removal a political stunt meant to silence people who disagree.
U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle agreed in January. In his decision, the judge said that there was “not a hint of misconduct” and that the claims that there were blanket rules against charging certain crimes were “false.” Hinkle said that DeSantis broke both the Florida law and Warren’s rights under the First Amendment.
“The judge found that this was a planned hit on me, that they had decided from the beginning that they were going to kill a reform prosecutor,” Warren told FOX 13 in an exclusive interview after the decision. “That was the reason: political revenge against a political opponent, end of story.”
Despite what the federal judge found, he also said he didn’t have the power to change what the governor did.
Warren says that the judge’s decision shows that he has a legal right to be put back on the job. He wants the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to agree with Hinkle’s findings that they have the power to put him back on the job.
The governor’s lawyers say that Warren’s suspension was fair.
In a brief, they said, “The governor suspended Mr. Warren because of non-prosecution policies that showed Mr. Warren’s neglect of duty and incompetence and made the criminal law less of a deterrent in the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit, which is the Hillsborough County circuit.”
Warren says that his dismissal sets a bad example.
“In the Governor’s mind, an elected official has no right to tell her people what she thinks about the problems and policies she is in charge of, and voters have no right to hear what she thinks.
According to the First Amendment, the Governor can cancel elections and get rid of people in office just because he doesn’t agree with what they say. Warren wrote in his plea, “He can fire any state attorney just because she doesn’t belong to his political party.”
Warren has also sent an official letter to the governor asking him to follow the law and the judge’s decision and put him back on the job. His requests have been dismissed.
In a different case, Warren is asking the Supreme Court of Florida to put him back on the job.
His federal court meeting starts at 2 p.m.
