Toca v. State, No. 2D01-1424

Decision Date06 September 2002
Docket Number No. 2D01-1424, No. 2D01-5510, No. 2D02-131.
Citation834 So.2d 204
PartiesJesse TOCA, Petitioner, v. STATE of Florida, Respondent.
CourtFlorida District Court of Appeals

Jesse Toca, pro se.

Robert A. Butterworth, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Richard M. Fishkin, Assistant Attorney General, Tampa, for Respondent.

ORDER ON MOTION TO ACCOMMODATE RELIGIOUS BELIEFS

NORTHCUTT, Judge.

Jesse Toca, a pro se litigant who has filed numerous proceedings in this court, persists in refusing to sign his filings. On March 7, 2002, we directed Mr. Toca to sign his filings and warned that unsigned documents filed after that date would be stricken. In response, Mr. Toca has filed a motion in which he asserts that we must forgo the signature requirement as an accommodation of his religious beliefs. He is mistaken.1

BACKGROUND

Mr. Toca alleges that his religious beliefs prohibit his taking any sort of oath.2 Further, he maintains that "[r]equiring or forcing [him] to sign any documents he files ... amounts to forcing [him] to take an oath or to pledge allegiance to this Court, which amounts to forcing this Court's religion upon [him]." Therefore, he argues, we are compelled to excuse him from the signature requirement by the Free Exercise Clauses of the Florida and Federal Constitutions, the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, Florida's Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1998, and a United Nations treaty known as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.3

We asked the State to respond to Mr. Toca's motion and, in particular, to address the question whether Florida's Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1998 (RFRA), § 761.01-.05, Fla. Stat. (2002), is applicable to rules of court. Instead, the State has asserted that Mr. Toca's alleged religious belief is not protected by the RFRA because it is not sincere. The State points to several 1998 documents filed by Mr. Toca or on his behalf in proceedings before the County Court for Pinellas County, the Circuit Court for the Sixth Judicial Circuit, and the Florida Judicial Qualifications Commission, all of which were signed by him and most of which were signed under oath or verified under penalty of perjury. The State charges that Mr. Toca actually is motivated by his belief that refusing to sign his filings permits him to lie in court proceedings without fear of prosecution for perjury.

DISCUSSION

Florida Rule of Judicial Administration 2.060 sets forth the requirements for the signing of pleadings and other filings. Subsection (c) describes the signature requirements for filings of attorneys. Subsection (d), entitled "Party Not Represented by Attorney to Sign," requires that "[a] party who is not represented by an attorney shall sign any pleading or other paper and state the party's address and telephone number, including area code." Subsection (e) describes the forms of signatures deemed acceptable for purposes of the rule. It provides:

(1) The signatures required on pleadings and papers by subdivisions (c) and (d) of this rule may be:

(A) original signatures;
(B) original signatures that have been reproduced by electronic means, such as on electronically transmitted documents or photocopied documents; or
(C) any other signature format authorized by general law, so long as the clerk where the proceeding is pending has the capability of receiving and has obtained approval from the Supreme Court of Florida to accept pleadings and papers with that signature format.

Mr. Toca has not signed his filings in any manner that complies with this rule.4 As a preliminary matter, we resist the temptation to simply end the discussion by pointing out that the signature required of Mr. Toca is not an oath. This can be seen by comparing the rule governing filings by unrepresented litigants to the requirement imposed on attorneys. The latter provides that "[t]he signature of an attorney shall constitute a certificate by the attorney that the attorney has read the pleading or other paper; that to the best of the attorney's knowledge, information, and belief there is good ground to support it; and that it is not interposed for delay." Fla. R. Jud. Admin. 2.060(c). In contrast, rule 2.060(d) states that an unrepresented person merely must affix his signature along with his address and telephone number.

Whether the certification contemplated in the attorney's signature requirement qualifies as an oath may be debatable. See Metcalf v. Langston, 296 So.2d 81 (Fla. 1st DCA 1974)

(observing that an attorney's signature on a pleading is a certification that there are good grounds to support it, but does not attest to its truthfulness). If that is so, there can be no question that the bare signature required of an unrepresented person is not an oath. Rather, the purpose of this requirement is simply, but importantly, one of authentication. See Schaefer v. Riegelman, 250 Wis.2d 494, 639 N.W.2d 715 (2002); Coker v. Weatheread, 852 S.W.2d 764 (Tex.App.1993). Requiring signatures reduces the possibility that a court will act in reliance on allegations, representations, arguments, stipulations, or admissions of a party who has not actually made them. See, e.g., J.L.S. v. R.J.L., 708 So.2d 293 (Fla. 2d DCA 1998) (reversing order transferring venue based on alleged unsigned stipulation that was disavowed by appellant).

The fact that Mr. Toca's signature would not constitute an oath does not resolve the issue before us, however. To the contrary, this fact might be wholly irrelevant, depending on which body of law we apply. This would be the case under a purely constitutional analysis.

Both the Federal and the Florida Constitutions guarantee an individual's right to freely exercise his religion.5 When considering assertions that these provisions exempt a person from regulatory mandates when compliance would contravene his religious beliefs, courts avoid questioning the rationality of those beliefs. In Employment Division, Department of Human Resources v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872,

887, 110 S.Ct. 1595,

108 L.Ed.2d 876 (1990), the Court observed that "[i]t is not within the judicial ken to question the centrality of particular beliefs or practices to a faith, or the validity of particular litigants' interpretations of those creeds" (quoting Hernandez v. Comm'r, 490 U.S. 680, 699, 109 S.Ct. 2136, 104 L.Ed.2d 766 (1989)).

Therefore, although we have pointed out that Mr. Toca's signature would not constitute an oath in a secular sense, we do not presume to question whether his interpretation of the religious proscription is valid or rational. Further, although Mr. Toca has not yet proved that he sincerely abides by a religious proscription against taking oaths and that this prohibition includes the signing of documents filed in this court, we will assume the truth of these allegations for purposes of analyzing Mr. Toca's constitutional assertions.

Nevertheless, the Federal Constitution does not require us to excuse Mr. Toca from the signature rule. In Smith, 494 U.S. 872, 110 S.Ct. 1595, 108 L.Ed.2d 876, the United States Supreme Court held that the right of free exercise does not relieve an individual of the obligation to comply with a valid and neutral law of general applicability on the ground that the law proscribes conduct that his religion prescribes, or vice versa. The Smith Court rejected a claim by Native Americans that the Free Exercise Clause permitted them to ingest peyote for religious purposes notwithstanding the Oregon controlled substances law. In a majority opinion by Justice Scalia, the Court held that a law that is neutral and of general applicability need not be justified by a compelling governmental interest even if the law has the incidental effect of burdening a particular religious practice.

Applying Smith, we can easily see that rule 2.060(d) is a neutral, generally applicable regulation that only incidentally burdens Mr. Toca's exercise of religion. Therefore, the Free Exercise Clause of the Federal Constitution does not exempt Mr. Toca from the signature requirement contained in rule 2.060(d).

We have found no authority holding that Florida's Free Exercise Clause requires a different analysis or result. For the most part, the courts have treated the protection afforded under the state constitutional provision as coequal to the federal one, and have measured government regulations against it accordingly.6 See, e.g., Yasir v. Singletary, 766 So.2d 1197 (Fla. 5th DCA 2000)

. See also Commentary to Art. I, § 3, 1968 Revision of the Florida Constitution (observing that Florida's Free Exercise Clause parallels the First Amendment and that cases under the First Amendment are "of great value in evaluating the status of religious freedoms"). In some instances, Florida courts have applied a compelling interest test in cases involving an "overlap" of the right to free exercise and a fundamental right, such as the Florida constitutional right of privacy. See In re Dubreuil, 629 So.2d 819, 822 (Fla.1993). The matter before us involves no such overlap. Accordingly, we apply Smith and conclude that requiring Mr. Toca to comply with rule 2.060(d) does not violate his rights under article I, section 3 of the Florida Constitution.

In addition to his constitutional argument, Mr. Toca relies on the so-called Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (RFRA) enacted by the United States Congress and the Florida Legislature. Congress passed the federal law in 1993 in direct response to the Smith decision. 42 U.S.C. § 2000bb-1 to -4. However, the United States Supreme Court invalidated the law as applied to state and local regulations. City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507, 117 S.Ct. 2157, 138 L.Ed.2d 624 (1997). Therefore, Mr. Toca's reliance on it is for naught.

In response to Flores, the Florida Legislature passed Florida's own Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1998, modeled after its federal predecessor. The avowed purpose of the legislation is to...

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