The Florida Supreme Court heard arguments final week in a problem to a 2011 state law surrounding weapons. A preemption law handed in 1987 says municipalities can’t have gun rules stricter than these handed by the state. The 2011 law boosted penalties for such occurrences — and that’s what has local governments upset.
“As a past elected official, it’s a very dangerous place to put in place fines for local officials to do their job,” says Gil Ziffer. He was a Tallahassee City Commissioner when he and different metropolis leaders have been sued in 2014 over a local gun coverage. It needed to do, partly, with firing a gun in parks and on metropolis property.
“Since we weren’t enforcing it because we hadn’t enforced it since the preemption, we as a group decided and voted to just not remove it, which of course upset them very much,” Ziffer says, referring to Florida Carry and the Second Amendment Foundation, the gun rights teams that sued. A decrease court docket and an appeals court docket sided with the City of Tallahassee for the reason that gun coverage was not being enforced.
The case now earlier than the state’s excessive court docket started after the mass capturing at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018. City and county officers wished to take motion on the local stage, however the law says they are often fined $5000 and even faraway from workplace for doing so.
Ziffer, who was president of the Florida League of Cities on the time, notes the 2011 law additionally permits residents and organizations to obtain lawyer charges and damages in the event that they efficiently sue local governments for improper gun rules.
“This whole process that we’re going through with the Legislature is really scary, because right now it has to do with guns,” Ziffer says. “What happens if they choose to, let’s say fine people, because (of) every mask that they find somebody wearing because that particular city said you should wear masks (against state law)? They get fined $5,000 each. When does all this end?”
Tallahassee is now amongst greater than 30 municipalities together with dozens of people difficult these punishments earlier than the state supreme court docket. Plaintiffs allege the law violates a sort of authorized immunity granted to local leaders and governments. The law was struck down by a Leon County circuit choose in 2019, and final yr, an appeals court docket overturned the ruling.
“Local officials should not be held accountable financially, personally, for anything that they do in the course of their everyday business,” Ziffer says.
Arguing for the State within the case now being weighed by the Florida Supreme Court, Chief Deputy Solicitor General Daniel Bell pointed to the Florida Legislature’s authority over local governments.
“The state legislature has the authority to legislate in any area not prohibited to it, like speech or religion. So, it’s plaintiffs’ burden to identify a provision of the Constitution that restricts the Legislature’s power to adopt penalties like this, and there simply isn’t one,” Bell mentioned.
Under the hierarchy established within the Florida Constitution, Bell added, “There’s no reason the Legislature wouldn’t be able to provide penalties for its statute, just like any other statute.”