When it seemed that Republicans in Congress couldn’t stoop any lower, they did.
The opposition to Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson had already become notorious for the transparent racism and misogyny on the part of some senators. Now, their House counterparts have taken an opportunity to vent venom and spite against a second Black judge — in this case, a Floridian — even though it meant dishonoring the dead.
Their excuse: a single long-ago decision involving school prayer.
Opening a posthumous front in the social wars, House Republicans thwarted passage of a bill naming the federal courthouse in Tallahassee for the late Joseph W. Hatchett, who served on the Florida Supreme Court and the 11th U.S. Circuit of Appeals and resided in the capital city.
He made history as the first Black jurist in both positions, and the first Black candidate to win a statewide election in Florida. Barack Obama later did it twice.
Both of Florida’s senators and all 27 House members co-sponsored the bill to name the building for Hatchett, who died last April. The Senate passed it unanimously, but last Wednesday 10 of Florida’s 16 House Republicans turned their backs on their own bill and — make no mistake — on their own state to help defeat a motion that required a two-thirds vote under suspension of the rules. There were 238 votes for it but only 19 were by Republicans, who cast 186 nays, which left the vote 45 short of the necessary super-majority.
Rep. Al Lawson, D-Tallahassee, the prime sponsor, watched in shock during the electronic roll call as Republicans changed their votes from yea to nay. Lawson’s press aide said the attack came as a surprise. Shunning parliamentary courtesy, Clyde had not given Lawson a heads-up.
The instigator
The instigator was North Georgia Rep. Andrew Clyde, a freshman notorious for likening the Jan. 6 insurrection to a “normal tourist visit” and for casting one of only three House votes against the Emmett Till anti-lynching bill that President Biden signed last week. The congressman said he considered it unnecessary.
Clyde dug up, or was supplied with, a 1999 majority opinion in which Hatchett, writing for a split three-judge panel, overturned a local school board graduation policy in Jacksonville that circumvented a Supreme Court’s ban on government sponsored school prayer. The full court took the case and reversed the decision by another split vote after he retired.
This was one opinion out of thousands in which Hatchett participated after Gov. Reubin Askew made history by appointing him to the Florida Supreme Court in 1976. To single it out as a reason to dishonor Hatchett’s entire career was ugly and petty.
Clyde, of course, also accused Judge Jackson, the mother of two daughters, of protecting sex offenders and child abusers, calling that “unforgivable” in a tweet.
Naming bills, as they are known, are rarely controversial and two others passed easily on the same day. What happened to Hatchett’s doesn’t defeat it permanently, but it makes its eventual passage more problematic.
A Florida Republican, Rep. Dan Webster of Ocoee, representing the committee that approved the bill, urged the House to pass it.
‘A good man, a good friend’
“He was a good man, a good friend, and someone I knew very, very well. This is a well-deserved appointment and naming,” Webster said.
Webster, the first Republican speaker of the Florida House in more than a century (1996-1998), is a deeply religious conservative who co-sponsored at least one school prayer bill in his long legislative career. He was widely respected by members of both parties for his sincerity and fairness.
Only five other Florida Republicans followed his lead in voting for the bill they all had co-sponsored: Reps. Mario Diaz Balart, Carlos Gimenez and Maria Salazar of Miami; Michael Waltz of St. Augustine Beach; and Bill Posey of Rockledge.
Here are the 10 turncoats who betrayed their own bill and our entire state and blindly followed Clyde’s lead for the sake of a cheap shot in the culture wars: Reps. Gus Bilirakis of Palm Harbor, Vern Buchanan of Sarasota, Kat Cammack of Gainesville, Byron Donalds of Naples, Neal Dunn of Panama City, Scott Franklin of Lakeland, Matt Gaetz of Fort Walton Beach, Brian Mast of Palm City, Scott Franklin of Lakeland, John Rutherford of Jacksonville and Greg Steube of Sarasota.
Askew often said that the Hatchett appointment was the most satisfying thing he did during his eight years as governor. The governor was a great Floridian. So was Hatchett. History already honors them and always will, despite what happened last week.
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The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.
