Byrd v. Black Voters Matter Capacity Bldg. Inst., Inc.

• Decision Date: 27 May 2022
• Docket Number: 1D22-1470
• Parties: Secretary of State Cord BYRD, et al., Appellants, v. BLACK VOTERS MATTER CAPACITY BUILDING INSTITUTE, INC., et al., Appellees.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

339 So.3d 1070

Secretary of State Cord BYRD, et al., Appellants,

v.BLACK VOTERS MATTER CAPACITY BUILDING INSTITUTE, INC., et al., Appellees.

No. 1D22-1470

District Court of Appeal of Florida, First District.

May 27, 2022

Mohammad O. Jazil, Michael Beato, and Gary V. Perko of Holtzman Vogel Baran Torchinsky & Josefiak, PLLC, Tallahassee; and Bradley R. McVay and Ashley E. Davis, Florida Department of State, Tallahassee, for Appellant Secretary of State Cord Byrd.

Daniel E. Nordby, George E. Meros, and Tara R. Price of Shutts & Bowen LLP, Tallahassee; and Carlos Rey and Jason Rojas, Florida Senate, Tallahassee, for Florida Senate Appellants.

Andy Bardos of GrayRobinson, P.A., Tallahassee, for Florida House Appellants.

Frederick S. Wermuth and Thomas A. Zehnder of King, Blackwell, Zehnder & Wermuth, P.A., Orlando; and Christina A. Ford of Elias Law Group LLP, Washington D.C., for Appellees.

Henry C. Whitaker, Solicitor General, Tallahassee; Jeffrey Paul DeSousa and Daniel W. Bell, Chief Deputy Solicitors General, Tallahassee; David M. Costello, Assistant Solicitor General, Tallahassee; and Bilal Ahmed Faruqui, Assistant Attorney General, Tallahassee, for Attorney General Ashley Moody.

Tanenbaum, J.

This case is an appeal from a temporary injunction rendered against Florida's secretary of state. We have one pressing matter before us for now: a review of the circuit court's vacatur of a stay of that injunction, put in place by operation of Florida Rule of Appellate Procedure 9.310. To be sure, the case has garnered some public attention. Let us then save the interested reader some trouble by stating what we do not address in this opinion.

Because there has been no trial and no final adjudication, this appeal—and, by implication, the secretary's request that we reinstate the stay, addressed below—could not reach whether recently enacted Senate Bill 2-C ("SB 2-C") comports with Article III, section 20, of the Florida Constitution (the "Fair Districts Amendment," or "FDA"). It would be of no use, then, for the reader to look ahead in this opinion to find any analysis on that question. It is not there. Had the parties wanted this central legal issue addressed as an urgent matter in this court, or by the supreme court on pass-through, they could have (and should have) expedited a trial or final hearing on their four-count declaratory judgment complaint. That would have produced a final order to be accorded a full appellate review, including consideration of the constitutional question.

Procedurally, however, the case was not in this posture when this appeal came in. A docket check reveals that the case still has not been set for trial. Indeed, there has been no activity in the circuit court since this appeal and the circuit court's vacatur of the automatic stay. This procedural dilatoriness under the circumstances highlights an extant misunderstanding about the limited role of a temporary injunction. We make clear in this opinion, then, that a temporary injunction is not a vehicle by which to procure a provisional remedy, nor is it a procedural tool by which to fast-track some burning constitutional question for appellate consideration in advance of trial.

Indeed, absent some specific statutory authorization, a circuit court is powerless to grant preliminary or provisional remedies in civil suits. The interlocutory power a circuit court has with respect to the parties before it in these circumstances is only procedural, not substantive. That power comes from Article V, section 5(b) of the Florida Constitution, which allows circuit courts to issue writs in furtherance of the full exercise of their jurisdiction, including the writ of injunction (now usually referred to as a temporary injunction). By whatever name, it has but one purpose: to maintain the status quo. A critical point in this opinion is that this constitutional writ cannot be used to give a party a remedy, even a temporary or provisional one. The function of the writ is solely preservative or preventative—to preserve the subject matter in controversy until a final disposition after a trial.

Even though our immediate task is to consider whether the circuit court erroneously vacated the automatic stay, we cannot do so while turning a blind eye to the obvious and fatal flaw in the underlying injunction. The temporary injunction before us on appeal does not just return the parties to the condition that existed before the subject matter at the center of the present controversy arose, i.e. , before SB 2-C became law. The order does much more. It gives the appellees affirmative relief by requiring the secretary to conduct the 2022 congressional elections under an entirely new, unenacted plan recently proposed by the appellees during the nascent litigation. In the order, the circuit court even acknowledges that it is crafting a remedy for the appellees until there can be a trial. The grant of this provisional remedy, unmoored from an adjudication, was an unauthorized exercise of judicial discretion, making the temporary injunction unlawful on its face.

This abuse of authority by the circuit court, by itself, is enough support for our disposition of the motion to reinstate the stay. Whether there is merit to the constitutional challenge at the center of the appellees’ complaint is a question for another day, after a trial in the circuit court. It is not a matter that is pertinent to our analysis in this appeal. We quash the circuit court's vacatur of the stay simply because there is no compelling justification for allowing a patently unlawful temporary injunction to remain in effect. The analysis that follows from here begins and ends with this foundational point.

I.

We cover some background first. The appellees sued pursuant to chapter 86 (Florida's declaratory judgment act) in search of a declaration that SB 2-C, which had just been signed into law, violated the FDA. The focus of the suit is congressional district five ("CD-5"), a majority-minority district previously approved by the supreme court that now sees its boundaries change substantially under SB 2-C. The complaint has four counts. The first count asks for a determination that SB 2-C results in the diminishment of Black voters’ ability to elect representatives of their choice (a results- or performance-based diminishment claim). The second asks for a determination that SB 2-C has the intent to abridge Black voters’ opportunity to participate in the political process (an intentional voter dilution claim) and to elect representatives of their choice (an intentional diminishment claim). The third count addresses alleged intentional favoritism toward the Republican Party of Florida, and the fourth count asserts a non-compactness violation. As supplemental relief for all four counts, the plaintiffs pray for a prohibitory injunction proscribing enforcement of SB 2-C in any congressional election and a mandatory injunction "ordering or adopting a new congressional districting plan that complies with Article III, Section 20 of the Florida Constitution."

The appellees then moved for a temporary injunction that did not just proscribe implementation of SB 2-C (and maintain the status quo) but also "ensure[d] that a necessary remedy is timely adopted and a lawful congressional plan is in place in North Florida in time for the 2022 congressional elections." The appellees based their motion entirely on their one claim in count one that SB 2-C had the effect of diminishing the ability of the plaintiffs and other Black voters to elect the representative of their choice.

Rather than schedule an in-person trial (with live witnesses and documents admitted into evidence), the appellees noticed the temporary injunction motion for hearing. The hearing was done by video-conference, and just one witness testified. Exhibits and affidavits went to the court as electronic filings in advance of the hearing. This is all we know about the hearing at this point because the parties have not submitted a transcript from it yet. From what we can glean, though, most of the three-hour hearing was spent on argument by counsel and pronouncements by the circuit court.

The circuit court granted the motion and ordered the secretary "to take all necessary steps to implement the final corrected version of Proposed Map A, as submitted to the Court and to counsel ... in time for the 2022 congressional elections, while the rest of the case proceeds to a trial on the merits." Underlying the circuit court's decision to grant the relief was its view that SB 2-C violated the plaintiffs' "fundamental constitutional right." On this basis, the circuit court relied on Gainesville Woman Care, LLC v. State , 210 So. 3d 1243 (Fla. 2017), to reason that it immediately must grant some remedy to the appellees in the form of a temporary injunction. At no point did the circuit court consider whether the status quo feasibly could be maintained pending trial.

The injunction automatically was stayed pursuant to Florida Rule of Appellate Procedure 9.310(b)(2) upon the filing of the secretary's notice of appeal of the temporary injunction. The appellees then filed an emergency motion to vacate the automatic stay, which the circuit court granted. The order vacating the stay is now before us for review by motion of the secretary.

II.

A.

As a procedural matter, the circuit court derives its authority to issue a temporary injunction in a civil action from Article V, section 5(b) of the Florida Constitution. That provision gives circuit courts the power to issue "all writs necessary or proper to the complete exercise of their jurisdiction." The power covers what once was commonly known as "a writ of injunction," which a court may issue "to maintain unchanged, as far as practicable, the status or condition of the subject-matter of the controversy during the pendency of the suit." Cohen v. L'Engle , 24 Fla. 542, 5 So. 235, 237, 238–39 (1888) ; see also Jacksonville Elec. Light Co. v. City of...