Judge considers whether Florida’s attorney general should be held in contempt over immigration law

MIAMI (AP) — A federal judge was considering Thursday whether Florida’s attorney general disobeyed her order prohibiting the enforcement of a new state law making it a misdemeanor for people in the U.S. illegally to enter Florida, and whether he should be held in contempt and sanctioned.

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams specified in her ruling last month that her temporary restraining order against enforcing the Florida law applied to all of the state’s local law enforcement agencies. The Miami judge later noted that there was a substantial likelihood that the Florida law would be found unconstitutional.

But Florida Attorney General James 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,” Florida’s attorney general 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.

In court papers, Uthmeier said that he was merely notifying local law enforcement agencies in the April 23 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.”

But attorneys for an immigrants rights groups that challenged the Florida law said it was unacceptable that the Florida attorney general’s April 23 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 Florida Immigrant Coalition. 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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