The Florida Supreme Court has reprimanded an unsuccessful judicial candidate for implying that incumbent Judge Robert Landt in Marion County had a bias against law enforcement and favored criminals in his rulings.
The high court on May 27 affirmed a Florida Bar complaint against attorney Bryon Aven that alleged Aven had violated rules of judicial conduct during a failed bid in 2018 to unseat Landt. The court ordered that the attorney be the subject of a public reprimand published in the Southern Reporter.
“We write to place future candidates for judicial office on notice that this court takes misrepresentations that cast a sitting judge in a false light seriously because of their potential to undermine confidence in the rule of law,” the Supreme Court said in its ruling.
Scott Tozian represented Bryon Aven in the judicial conduct case.
Indeed, the justices warned that similar conduct in future cases would likely result in more serious sanctions, such as suspensions from the practice of law.
Justices Charles Canady and Jorge Labarga dissented, arguing that the public reprimand was an insufficient punishment for Aven’s conduct.
Aven’s attorney, Scott Tozian, said the decision by the high court was in sync with expectations for candidate conduct in judicial elections that have been in place over the past two decades.
“Judicial campaign speech is limited to a much greater degree than partisan political speech is,” Tozian told the Florida Record. “... The Supreme Court has decided that judges are very much restricted in what they can say in these nonpartisan judicial elections.”
The high court agreed with the report of a referee who examined Aven’s online campaign posts about the incumbent judge and concluded that he had violated Florida Bar rules for judicial candidates.
“Mr. Aven accepted what the judge found and then of course we had to wait and see if the Supreme Court would agree with that,” Tozian said. “... Mr. Aven very much accepts he could have done better, and he is ready to move on.”
Aven will also be required to pay nearly $3,700 in recovery costs for the disposition of the case, according to the court’s decision.
The outcome of the case will not chill judicial campaign speech any more than the rules of conduct have done in past years, Tozian said.