MIAMI (AP) — A federal judge heard arguments Thursday on whether Florida's attorney general should be held in contempt or sanctioned for not following her order prohibiting the enforcement of a new state law making it a misdemeanor for people in the U.S. illegally to enter Florida.
U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams didn't make an immediate decision following an almost two-hour court hearing. Attorney General James Uthmeier didn't attend the court session in Miami.
The federal judge had specified in a ruling last month that her temporary restraining order against enforcing the Florida law applied to all of the state’s local law enforcement agencies. She later noted that there was a substantial likelihood that the Florida law would be found unconstitutional.
But Uthmeier sent out an April 23 letter to Florida's law enforcement agencies saying that he couldn't prevent law enforcement officers from enforcing the law “where there remains no judicial order that properly restrains you from doing so.”
“As set forth in the brief my office filed today, it is my view that no lawful, legitimate order currently impedes your agencies from continuing to enforce Florida’s new illegal entry and reentry laws,” he said in the letter.
Dozens of people, including a U.S. citizen, have been arrested under the law. Uthmeier has appealed the judge's order to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. Uthmeier, a former chief of staff to Ron DeSantis, was appointed to the position by the Republican governor after then-state Attorney General Ashley Moody was picked to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Marco Rubio, who was nominated to be President Donald Trump's secretary of state.
In court papers, Uthmeier said he was merely notifying local law enforcement agencies in the letter that he had filed a court brief that held a legal view disagreeing with the judge's order. He had obeyed the judge's order by notifying local law enforcement agencies in an April 18 letter that they couldn't enforce the law while the court case proceeded, according to Uthmeier's court filings.
“There is no basis for contempt or sanctions,” Uthmeier said. “Interpreting an order to prohibit a state attorney general from disagreeing with a federal order — while following it — would also be an extraordinary, first-of-its-kind assertion of federal judicial power, implicating grave constitutional concerns.”
Attorneys for immigrants' rights groups that challenged the Florida law said it was unacceptable that the attorney general's letter “encouraged arrests that he fully understood were specifically prohibited.”
Even if Uthmeier's arguments are taken at face value, that he was merely stating his legal position, he has done nothing to clear up the confusion despite given ample opportunities, said lawyers for the immigrants' rights groups. They said the options the judge could consider include financial sanctions and referring Uthmeier's conduct to the Florida Bar for disciplinary proceedings or to federal authorities for prosecution.
“Considered objectively and in the context of the earlier letter, the Attorney General’s second letter plainly undermined the notice he was directed to provide, and invited arrests which he knew would be violations of this court’s order," the immigrants rights' lawyers said in court papers. "That is quintessential contempt of court.”
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David Fischer And Mike Schneider, The Associated Press
