In a win for Republican lawmakers and the National Rifle Association, an appeals court Friday upheld a 2011 state law that threatens tough penalties if city and county officials approve gun-related regulations.

A three-judge panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal rejected a challenge to the NRA-backed law by 30 cities, three counties and more than 70 local officials. A Leon County circuit judge in 2019 found that parts of the law were unconstitutional, spurring Attorney General Ashley Moody and Gov. Ron DeSantis to appeal.

NRA, GOP win as court upholds law preventing local gun control

This decision came down a month ago and it came to my attention last week. Florida’s State Preemption on Firearms had been take to court as unconstitutional, specially when it came to the hefty penalties applied to individuals in local government and the local government itself. The penalty to individuals is $5,000 and it is specially “harsh” because the law mandates that no public funding can be used to pay for it. Basically that the violating individual has to pay out of his/her pocket which is why I say this particular has teeth in it.

The local governments and officials did not challenge the underlying 1987 preemption law but contended the penalties in the 2011 law were unconstitutional. Friday’s ruling focused on arguments that the 2011 law should be rejected because of two legal concepts known as “government function immunity” and “legislative immunity.”

Judge Susan Kelsey, writing for the appellate panel, rejected the arguments and pointed to the state’s “superior authority in this context.”

Here is the text of the opinion and it slams the door pretty hard on the cities. The way I read it (IANAL warning) is they tried to go against the concept of preemption while saying they respected it (contradictions are never good) and also tried to inject separation of powers and Federal stuff that did not apply remotely to the case. The concept of state preemption is pretty well established in Florida with several prior cases already decided in favor of it as I read in the opinion, so in my untrained eye, this looked more like a legal Hail Mary/Propaganda move.

I understand a bit more the opposition Democrats had this year to SB 1884 “expanding” preemption of firearms to cover also unwritten gun control policies and allowing plaintiffs who sue local governments to get paid even if the elected officials dump the policy before the judge comes with a decision. Once becoming a law, this opinion by the 1st District Court of Appeals makes it all but impossible to challenge.

And cases like this are the little obscure things we don’t pay attention to because (to paraphrase from the film “The Firm”) they are not “sexy” but got teeth and go a long way to keep the grubby hands of the Gun Controllers from infringing in our rights.

Wayne Tarrance : Get ’em with what? Overbilling, mail fraud? Oh, that’s exciting.
Mitch McDeere : It’s not sexy, but it’s got teeth! Ten thousand dollars and five years in prison. That’s ten and five for each act. Have you really looked at that? You’ve got every partner in the firm on overbilling. There’s two hundred fifty acts of documented mail fraud there. That’s racketeering! That’s minimum one thousand, two hundred fifty years in prison and half a million dollars in fines. That’s more than you had on Capone.