Recent Decision Regarding Bias Elimination Training Shows Florida Supreme Court in Lockstep With DeSantis

The Florida Supreme Court strikes again. Last week, it struck down requirements for judges to take bias elimination training and did so sua sponte, which means the action was taken without a complaint or pending case before it.

This is the second time the Florida Supreme Court attacked continuing legal education that features issues on race and diversity. In 2021, it ruled that the Florida Bar can no longer issue continuing legal education credits to any entity that requires diversity in selecting speakers. As a result, many attorneys couldn’t submit classes that they attended for credit because of a host organization’s stated commitment to ensure a diversity of people and ideas on a panel.

To be clear, every attorney in the state of Florida must fulfill continuing legal education requirements to be able to practice; judges have a separate set of requirements that they must fulfill due to their critical role in the system.

This is concerning because every one of us has bias. The key is to understand and recognize it when making important decisions so that no one is harmed. It’s critical for a judge to be able to understand where their biases lie, so that when making rulings that impact a person’s life or freedom, they can take the time to make a fair and impartial decision based on facts, and not rooted in bias.

Having implicit bias is not the same as explicit racism; it’s a result of prior experiences, stereotypes and misconceptions about a race – one that is different from or even same as your own. Much like remembering how to tie one’s shoes, these biases are unconscious; they’re a matter of reflex. You don’t have to think about how to tie your shoes and bias can creep in the same way.

If you thought the only Black justice on the Florida Supreme Court disagreed with the ruling, you would be sadly mistaken. The lone dissenting voice was Justice Jorge Labarga, who stated that removing a “fairness and diversity” requirement for judicial ethics training in subsection (b)(2) “paves the way for a complete dismantling of all fairness and diversity initiatives in the State Court System.”

“While I appreciate the majority’s observation that the existing rules should be sufficient to cover appropriate ethics courses on these topics, this unilateral action potentially eliminates vital educational content from our state courts’ judicial education curriculum and does so in a manner inconsistent with this Court’s years-long commitment to fairness and diversity education,” Labarga warned.

Sadly, several of our current Supreme Court justices were appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has made it clear he is hostile to communities of color. This is a continuation of his agenda to remove all discussions and protections around race.

We’ve seen it with the governor’s comments disrespecting the jury’s verdict in the Chauvin case and with his signing of an unnecessary and regressive anti-protest bill that attacks free speech. We’ve watched him strip access to the ballot box and unevenly distribute COVID vaccines to the point where 100% of wealthy white people are vaccinated in Florida as opposed to only 31% of Black residents.

Now DeSantis is pressuring state university professors to strip any mention of racial topics for fear of “upsetting” white students, and he very recently threatened to stop doing business with the College Board after it asserted itself in the battle over an Advanced Placement African American Studies course. The governor’s intentions are clear as day. He even signed a bill demanding all university professors fill out regular surveys to determine their political beliefs that also empowered students to secretly record their professors for daring to opine differently than the conservative status quo.

This is incredibly destructive to our communities and the criminal justice system as a whole. If judges aren’t trained on identifying and controlling their biases, we will see more injustice in a system that already grapples with flaws.

This is your daily reminder that elections matter. The entire Florida Supreme Court is appointed by the governor, and its justices hold their position for a lifetime unless they fail the retention vote, which is held every six years. The effects of these appointments are felt for a generation and beyond. Note that as voters, we can vote not to retain justices – please remember we do have some power in this situation.

The judiciary is supposed to be independent, not following in lockstep with the governor’s war against social media, communities of color and any opinion that is not conservative. The goal of having a diverse panel and ethics training is to ensure diversity of ideas – conservative, progressive and independent. It is to raise awareness around a particular topic, which makes us better judges and lawyers, and more compassionate people.

Melba Pearson is an attorney specializing in civil rights and criminal justice policy. She was a homicide prosecutor in Miami and serves as president of the National Black Prosecutors Association Foundation, legal redress chair of the NAACP South Dade Branch and vice chair of the American Bar Association Criminal Justice Section. Learn more about her at MelbaPearsonEsq.com.