A Leon County judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought by state Sen. Jason Pizzo (D-Hollywood) that challenged the governor’s program to transport undocumented immigrants to other states.
Second Judicial Circuit Judge John Cooper dismissed the senator’s lawsuit in the wake of Gov. Ron DeSantis signing into law legislation that recast the immigration-relocation program and made the arguments in the litigation moot. Pizzo argued that the way the program was set up represented a violation of the state constitution.
In a Feb. 17 filing, attorneys for DeSantis and the Department of Transportation suggested Pizzo’s legal arguments were superseded by the governor’s signing of Senate Bill 6-B. Pizzo had argued in his lawsuit filed last September that the immigrant program was created as part of an appropriations bill in violation of provisions of the Florida Constitution.
“Sen. Pizzo’s challenge was based on the fact that the (relocation) program was enacted as part of the General Appropriations Act,” Mark Herron, Pizzo’s attorney, told the Florida Record, adding that a substantially new program cannot be created within that act.
Pizzo’s complaint was filed after the DeSantis administration funded the transport of 50 migrants from Texas to a “sanctuary area” in Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. Litigation over that action is ongoing in Massachusetts, Herron said.
The lawsuit argued that Section 185 of the General Appropriations Act violated both the state and federal constitutions, but that section was repealed when DeSantis signed SB 6-B.
“(The) plaintiff’s constitutional claims against Section 185 are moot, and this court no longer has jurisdiction over the case,” the governor’s attorneys argued in a filing last month.
Under the newly signed legislation, the immigrant-relocation program was placed under the jurisdiction of the Florida Division of Emergency Management.
“The Legislature passed the law in the correct way and eviscerated all the problems that the previous law had, and our lawsuit became moot,” Herron said.