A 2011 law that has threatened tough penalties if city and county officials approve gun regulations was challenged by many local governments, who now want the Florida Supreme Court to rule. The groups challenged the restrictions after the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.
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Since 1987, Florida has barred municipalities from passing regulations that are stricter than state firearms laws. Penalties in the 2011 law were designed to strengthen that “preemption.”
Pointing to “far-reaching, statewide implications,” local governments want the Florida Supreme Court to rule in a case about a 2011 state law that threatens tough penalties if city and county officials approve gun-related regulations.
Attorneys for the local governments filed a motion Friday requesting that the 1st District Court of Appeal send to the Supreme Court key issues in the case - a move known as certifying “questions of great public importance.”
The motion, filed Friday, came two weeks after a panel of the Tallahassee-based appeals court upheld the constitutionality of the 2011 law, which was challenged by 30 cities, three counties and more than 70 local officials.
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Florida Court Upholds Law that Penalizes Local Gun Control Regulations
A Florida appeals court on Friday upheld a state law from 2011 that would impose penalties on local authorities if they enact or enforce local gun control regulations.
A three-judge panel of the Florida First District Court of Appeal in Tallahassee granted an appeal from the state of Florida that sought to uphold the law. The appeal by Attorney General Ashley Moody and Gov. Ron DeSantis was in response to a lower court ruling in 2019 that found the 2011 law unconstitutional.
“The trial court invalidated Florida’s statutory penalties against local governments, local officials, and agency heads for violating the Florida Legislature’s total preemption of firearm and ammunition regulation,” the ruling by Judge Susan Kelsey reads (pdf). “We find the challenged statutes valid and enforceable, and we reverse.”
An appeals court wants The Florida Bar to consider disciplinary action against a Panhandle attorney who pursued a high-profile case seeking to force Gov. Ron DeSantis to close beaches because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal, in an order issued Friday, stopped short of imposing financial sanctions against Santa Rosa Beach attorney Daniel Uhlfelder and lawyers who represented him in an appeal of a circuit judge’s ruling in the case.
But the panel sharply criticized Uhlfelder and his lawyers, saying that “they knew or should have known that their ‘demands’ that the Governor ‘close the beaches’ were not validly asserted below (in the circuit court) or on appeal.”