Words matter for what they represent.
When Lincoln described a “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” it magnificently defined what our nation is all about.
Words matter to authoritarian governments, too. To control their people, they must also manipulate how they speak. That was the motif of Orwell’s novel “1984,” in which a dictatorship redefines “war” as “peace” and “ignorance” as “strength.”
Now, in Florida, life imitates Orwell’s art.
The ruling political party’s dogma bleaches American history of its racist roots and pretends that racism is irrelevant to the present day. Gov. Ron DeSantis even intends to banish diversity, equity and inclusion from course titles and curricula at state colleges and universities.
A high court’s low road
The Florida Supreme Court follows DeSantis’s authoritarian lead. It has censored anything having to do explicitly with “fairness” or “diversity.”
To six justices of that court, those words have become so offensive as to be forbidden topics for courses new judges are required to take. On their own motion, with no case pending before them, the six justices have amended their rules of judicial administration to delete this language:
“Approved courses in fairness and diversity also can be used to fulfill the judicial ethics requirement.”
Gone. Stricken.
They replaced it with this: “Approved courses which pertain to judicial professionalism, opinions of the Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee, and the Code of Judicial Conduct can be used to fulfill the judicial ethics requirement.”
The justices responsible for that are Charles Canady, John Couriel, Renatha Francis, Jamie Grosshans, Ricky Polston and the chief justice, Carlos Muñiz.
They objected to what they called the “unilluminating and frequently contested term ‘fairness and diversity.’”
To say that “fairness” and “diversity” are “unilluminating” is to twist the English language as brutally as Orwell’s fictional Big Brother did. Everyone knows what they mean. The problem is that some people don’t like what they mean.
The Code of Judicial Conduct, the justices rationalized, is adequate to show “that civility and equal regard for the legal rights of every person are at the heart of judicial professionalism.”
‘A complete dismantling’
That didn’t fool Justice Jorge Labarga. He has had to dissent often since DeSantis packed the court with right-wing justices, and his latest dissent points out that the damage extends to what the forbidden words represent:
“(T)his unilateral action potentially eliminates vital education 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. Moreover, it paves the way for a complete dismantling of all fairness and diversity initiatives in the State Courts System. I strenuously dissent.”
That irked the majority, which edited their opinion to rebut the dissent as “unjustified” for suggesting that they’re not “unwavering” in their commitment “to the foundational principles of civility, due process and equal justice under law.”
Labarga’s dissent exposed that fallacy.
“Now, inexplicably, and without prior input from relevant parties … this Court sees fit to eliminate an express consideration of fairness and diversity from the continuing judicial education curriculum,” he wrote.
Yes, he said, the canons of judicial conduct “do prohibit bias and prejudice in their various forms.” But the purpose of the now-forbidden words, he explained, “has been to complement the canons, and in the hope of addressing the extremely complex issue that is discrimination, to educate the judiciary on strategies for recognizing and combatting discrimination. … Such a decision at this level of institutional gravity is, in my opinion, unwarranted, untimely, and ill-advised.”
It isn’t the court’s first anti-diversity initiative. In December 2021, again with no prior notice to anybody, the majority effectively prohibited the Florida Bar’s diversity guidelines for the selection of continuing legal education teachers. All Florida lawyers are required to take those courses.
Despite a barrage of protests, the majority refused to reconsider or even hear oral arguments on what it had done.
That stroke, and the latest one, fit hand-in-glove with DeSantis’s campaign to excise anything “woke” from Florida political life and especially at schools and colleges. “Woke” has become a right-wing buzzword.
To DeSantis, “woke” seems to describe anything that might provoke a citizen’s conscience or offend the sensibilities of voters who harbor more racism than they care to admit.
It’s sad to see the court playing his political game. It is forfeiting everything it had done to atone for having refused in the 1950s to admit a Black man, Virgil Hawkins, to the University of Florida law school.
Now, it is disgracing itself again, and for the same underlying reason: racism.
The opposite of “woke,” it should be remembered, is slumber.
Conscience is not just asleep at the Florida Supreme Court. It is comatose.
____
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.
