Editorial: Uthmeier has forgotten who he represents

It used to be the Florida Supreme Court's job to decide whether a law is unconstitutional. But the unelected man serving as Florida’s attorney general, James Uthmeier, has made that his domain to the detriment of Floridians.

Traditionally, the attorney general's principal responsibility is to defend the state in civil lawsuits, when a criminal conviction is appealed or if a law is challenged. But Uthmeier acts as if he has the power to pick and choose which laws he won't defend if he personally considers them unconstitutional.

That's like a public defender saying she won't represent a defendant because she thinks he's guilty. He's entitled to a defense regardless.

Uthmeier's selective enforcement is how he repealed a Florida law against open carrying of firearms - by default. After an appellate court tossed it, he refused to appeal the deplorable outcome to the Supreme Court. His inaction gave the gun lobby what even a pro-gun Legislature wouldn't.

He also refused to defend Florida's law against the sale of firearms to people under 21, which had been upheld by two federal courts and is now on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which doesn't seem inclined to hear it. Uthmeier has also gone out of his way to weaken criminal cases that don’t dovetail with his philosophy, including an Orlando road-rage case where a man was shot to death.

Giving guns to felons

He's back in court, siding with a Pennsylvania man convicted of a felony for carrying a gun without a license, who was subsequently busted for possessing a gun in Florida. Uthmeier says it's unconstitutional to deny a gun to a "non-dangerous" felon.

The Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association, whose stated mission includes "protecting people," has filed a court brief opposing him.

Uthmeier is the same attorney general who threatens to have the governor remove Orlando-area State Attorney Monique Worrell, a Democrat, for not prosecuting cases his way.

Cracks in church-state wall

In his latest I-am-the-law crusade, Uthmeier is repudiating one of the most fundamental aspects of our democracy, the separation of church and state.

He issued an opinion saying it's unconstitutional for Florida to deny college scholarships for study at religious institutions so long as it makes them available at nonsectarian schools. No court case is challenging that, so Uthmeier's opinion invites one.

This opinion is a direct attack on Florida's constitutional provision against spending public money "directly or indirectly in aid of any church, sect, or religious denomination or in aid of any sectarian institution." It's an endorsement of state-funded religious schools.

The Legislature has circumvented the ban by making K-12 vouchers available to students instead of funding private schools directly.

Uthmeier cites U.S. Supreme Court precedents saying states can't discriminate against religious schools in certain ways. But he would take that much further by legalizing direct aid to religious charter schools (there are none now).

So he's inviting someone to start one and promising in effect to help them overturn the state law that requires charter schools to be nonsectarian.

That's well beyond the Supreme Court's expansionist view of the free exercise clause in the First Amendment. He's attacking the other relevant First Amendment language, the establishment clause, which forbids the government from sponsoring any religion.

Legalistic extremism

Here's the difference: The government can help pay to rebuild a church damaged by a hurricane on the same basis as it would subsidize any other recovery. But it can't build a church or pay the pastor's salary.

Charter schools are public schools in every major respect other than how they're governed and in what rules they have to obey.

Taking Uthmeier's extremist opinion to its logical conclusion, Fort Lauderdale High parents could convert it to a fundamentalist Christian school favoring creationism or male supremacy, and no one could do anything about it. His opinion is a full-throated screed for Christian nationalism.

He argues that the First Amendment "did not displace Christianity as the center of the nation's religious identity" - a complete red herring.

The proper question is the role of religion in government, not in society.

The First Amendment requires government to be neutral on matters of religion, neither endorsing nor opposing.

Upending a delicate balance

Our original Constitution refers to religion only in forbidding any religious test to hold public office. A 1796 treaty with Tripoli declared that the U.S. government "is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion."

But in Uthmeier's view, "properly understood, the Religion Clauses work together to ensure people can live out their religious obligations to God."

In fact, the religion clauses work against each other. It's this delicate balance that he's trying to destroy.

An attorney general who cannot conscientiously defend a law owes his clients - the people of Florida - the duty of allowing a surrogate to do it.

If not, the people of Florida need a new attorney general.

The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board includes Executive Editor Roger Simmons, Opinion Editor Krys Fluker and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant, Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney and editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman. Send letters to insight@orlandosentinel.com.

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