Back in August, voters in Florida’s Hillsborough County took the rare step of voting out a sitting judge, one Judge Jared Smith of the county circuit court. Smith had been the focus of local outrage since a January case in which he refused to grant a teenaged girl’s petition to get an abortion without parental consent. The 17-year-old’s mother lived out of state, and her father strongly opposed abortion, but tough luck for her, because Smith is also a fundamentalist who thinks God wants more babies. Not that he said that openly, of course.
in the January case, Smith denied the girl’s petition, ruling that she was simply too “immature” to decide to have an abortion, but not too immature to parent a child. For instance, he doubted her “overall intelligence” because her high school GPA was 2.0, even though a C average is good enough to be president of the USA. Smith’s decision also noted disapprovingly that the girl only did basic chores at home, and didn’t even help take care of younger siblings like a responsible older sister would, so she should probably have a baby.
Fortunately for the girl, an appeals court panel overturned Smith’s ruling, finding that he had abused his judicial discretion. For one thing, nothing in Florida law links a grade point average to a minor’s maturity, and for another, the appeals court pointed out, the girl’s youngest sibling was 30 years old and not in need of a younger sister’s care. Yes really.
So hooray for Hillsborough County voters who tossed Smith off the bench in favor of attorney Nancy Jacobs instead. Just to make the campaign extra interesting, video emerged of Smith’s wife saying at an campaign event held in a church that Jacobs, who’s Jewish, needed to get right with God:
“We pray for her. She needs Jesus,” Suzette Smith said. “To deny God and to deny the Bible is a person that’s — the heart is very hard toward God.”
Ms. Smith said she didn’t mean that in an antisemitic way, just in the way that all heathens are bound for Hell unless they’re Of The Body.
This is where you clever readers who didn’t pay attention to our headline get to smack your foreheads and exclaim, “Oh for fuckssake!” Because that’s not the end of the story. While Smith’s last week in office as a Hillsborough County circuit judge will arrive in two weeks, he won’t be boxing up everything in his office to take home; he’ll instead be taking those boxes to a new and presumably better office, because Gov. Ron DeSantis has appointed Smith to a higher court, Florida’s newly created Sixth District Court of Appeal, where he’ll be able to uphold all the worst decisions of county judges like he’s been up to this point.
At least he won’t be ruling on any cases involving Jacobs, who took his place, or even his former colleagues, since the new court of appeals doesn’t cover Hillsboro. For Florida, that’s almost a sterling ethical win!
A legal challenge to Smith’s eligibility, arguing that he didn’t live in the boundaries of the new judicial district, was rejected by the Florida Supreme Court last week, so now there’s nothing to hold back Smith except his own vileness, and in Florida, that may even help him rise to even higher achievements. And just think of how Suzette Smith will enhance the social gatherings of the state judiciary with her calls for the Conversion of the Jews. Will that be a problem? The only Jews in Florida are all retired, right?
[Tampa Bay Times / Florida Politics]
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