In suspended Hillsborough state attorney case, what are the courts waiting for?

At a recent political event at the Corner Club in Seminole Heights, candidate Andrew Warren had an unusual ask of his competitor in the Democratic primary for Hillsborough state attorney.

Warren, removed as the county’s top prosecutor by Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2022 and running to regain the job, listened with the crowd as candidate Elizabeth Martinez Strauss explained the circumstances under which she would back out of the race. She said if the courts reinstated Warren to office by the deadline to qualify to run — and that’s this Friday — she’d exit.

Strauss said Warren asked her afterward: Would she mind putting that in writing in an affidavit?

“He said, ‘I think this may help the courts move expeditiously to reach a decision,” Strauss told the Tampa Bay Times.

By this week, however, Warren’s legal team showed no signs of pursuing what would have been an unusual action to urge the courts to get moving. But the request — which Strauss said she was happy to grant in a similar desire for expediency — underscored that all eyes in this race are on the federal courts in Warren’s battle to get back the job from Suzy Lopez, appointed by the governor to replace him.

In January, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals delivered a game-changing opinion potentially opening Warren’s path to reinstatement even before the election.

Warren was removed after the Republican governor accused him of refusing to enforce the law. He sought reinstatement in the courts but had decided not to run because, he said, the governor would likely suspend him again.

Enter Strauss, a former assistant public defender, prosecutor and first-time candidate. She said she never intended to run for office but did not want to see Republican Lopez go unchallenged. Notably, Strauss said if Warren got reinstated by the qualifying deadline — meaning he had secured the backing of the courts to keep the job if he won — she would bow out.

“I just want a viable Democrat” in the race, Strauss said. “My preference would be for them to reinstate (Warren) tomorrow.”

Then came that favorable appeals court ruling that critiqued the opinion of U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle in Tallahassee, who had sided with Warren but determined he did not have the power to reinstate him. The appeals court found, among other things, that the judge indeed has that power — opening up the possibility of Warren back at the helm even before the election.

But courts rarely move quickly, even when asked.

Warren’s lawyers filed a motion to speed things up and get the case sent back to the judge in Tallahassee. DeSantis’ lawyers asked that the case, which had been decided by a three-judge panel, be heard by all the appeals court judges.

On Tuesday, more than a month after the last action in the case was listed on the Public Access to Court Electronic Records website, came an order from the appeals court asking the attorneys to respond to how two U.S. Supreme Court cases involving public officials might affect Warren’s case — even though the 11th Circuit had already issued a lengthy ruling back in January.

One is the 1966 case of Bond v. Floyd, in which the Georgia House of Representatives refused to seat an elected U.S. representative, Julian Bond, who had expressed views critical of the Vietnam War. The Supreme Court sided with Bond’s free speech rights. The second is Walton v. House of Representatives, a 1924 case in which the ruling said in part that a “court of equity has no jurisdiction over the appointment and removal of public officers.”

Attorneys for DeSantis and Warren have 10 days to file briefs on what impact those cases could have on theirs.

It was unclear if those questions came from someone on the full panel of judges DeSantis requested after the court’s January order. But the matter will delay the case well past Friday’s qualifying deadline.