15 States Side With DeSantis in Battle Over Right to Oust Prosecutors
Attorneys General Fight for States’ Rights to Remove Prosecutors Who Refuse to Enforce Laws
A coalition of 15 attorneys general is taking a stand against leftist prosecutors who refuse to enforce laws, urging a federal appeals court to uphold states’ authority to remove them.
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, one of the leaders of the coalition, stated in a news release that “prosecutors have no right to exercise a veto over an entire law.” He added that “the political preferences of a single prosecutor cannot be allowed to override a lawfully enacted statute.”
The coalition is supporting Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in a lawsuit filed by former prosecutor Andrew Warren, who was ousted from his position after promising not to prosecute abortionists for alleged violations of Florida law. Warren is appealing a lower court’s ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta, and the Yost-led coalition has filed a brief asking the appeals court to reject Warren’s claim that DeSantis violated his free speech rights by removing him.
“Government employees do not have a First Amendment right not to enforce the law,” Yost’s news release emphasized.
Another Prosecutor Faces Ouster
The coalition’s efforts come as Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is also attempting to remove St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner from her elected office. Bailey accused Gardner of mismanaging her office, resulting in thousands of criminal cases being dismissed and victims’ rights being ignored. Gardner, a Democrat, alleges that Bailey, a Republican, is targeting her for political reasons.
Unlike Warren, Gardner’s lawyers claim that she has not willfully refused to prosecute cases. However, Bailey accuses her of lax enforcement, and Gardner has received support from billionaire George Soros, according to The Missouri Times.
For years, Soros has financially supported dozens of U.S. prosecutors who embrace his “reform” agenda. Many top Republicans blame Soros-backed prosecutors for the crime waves in many of the nation’s largest, Democrat-run cities.
“Our system is rife with injustices that make us all less safe,” Soros wrote in a 2022 essay. He advocates for “preventing crime with strategies that work—deploying mental-health professionals in crisis situations, investing in youth job programs, and creating opportunities for education behind bars.”
Discretion Versus Abdication
In the DeSantis-Warren case brief, Bailey and his peers assert that they “can properly remove from office prosecutors who make non-prosecution pledges.”
“These pledges violate the traditional separation of powers between government branches,” the brief states. “As every schoolchild learns, the legislative branch, not the executive, makes law.”
The brief acknowledges that prosecutors “have considerable discretion” over whether to proceed with charges on a case-by-case basis. But they “do not have the power to effectively repeal laws by categorically suspending enforcement,” the attorneys general say.
According to the brief, this trend of prosecutors refusing to enforce laws has been on the rise in recent years, with “prosecutors abandoning prosecutorial discretion in favor of prosecutorial abdication.”
Yost argues that ideologically based prosecutions can lead to the targeting of prosecutors’ political enemies while their allies go unpunished.
“A world in which each prosecutor is free to ignore the law in favor of his or her own indiv
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