A little local Florida judicial news that you will certainly enjoy. Yesterday, the Tallahassee Democrat ran a terrific story headlined, “DeSantis cements conservative majority on Florida Supreme Court.” Governor Ron DeSantis has now named six of the state’s seven current high court justices. That’s good enough, but it was much better than it even appears. Yesterday’s appointment was of perhaps my personal favorite appellate judge, Adam Tanenbaum, whom the paper described as “a staunch conservative.”

It’s only January, but I will already award the label “staunch conservative” the prize for understatement of the year. Even though Judge Tanenbaum recently ruled against me in a local elections case, I will never forget the very first time he ruled in my favor: my successful mask case. Here’s my favorite paragraph from his order, where Judge Tanenbaum described Alachua County’s mask ordinances as “diktaks”:

If you’ve never read Judge Tanenbaum’s order, you’ll love it. Here is a link from my personal dropbox. It wasn’t always easy to find. The big legal databases refused even to assign the opinion a citation number for two years.They covered the story up to the ruling, but not much afterwards.

Here, for instance, is a November, 2020, headline from a CBS story about the case before the ruling: “Florida Appeals Court Weighs Mask Mandate.” CBS briefly described our oral arguments:

The significance of Tanenbaum’s mask decision, rendered the following June, has never been fully appreciated. This was the very first case (and to this day, I believe, the only mask case) where an appellate court in the United States ruled against one of the central pandemic mitigation policies on constitutional grounds. Even though it wiped out mandatory masking in 33 counties in Florida, and caused the rest of the Sunshine State’s 67 counties to begin quietly retreating from their own mask orders, media stubbornly refused to report on it.

But the damage, as they say, was done. It was a game-changer. All across the country, news spread among lawyers who were fighting pandemic rules: it was possible to win. It encouraged more lawyers to join the fight. It began turning the tide. Just two months later, on the strength of my mask victory, I won the nation’s first broad injunction against a municipal “vaccinate or terminate” mandate.

The lawsuits began to multiply, and you know the rest of the story. The push back took time to pick up speed, but for the pandemic powers, it was all downhill from this key case, judicially speaking.

As you can imagine, even though Judge Tanenbaum’s order carefully skirted the radioactive issue of whether the useless things work or not, he still took furious flak and was savaged over his “anti-masking” decision. After all, at the time, it was June, 2021— the peak of mask and vaccine mania. He was the first appellate judge to rule against any significant pandemic policy. To say the least, it required a rare kind of selfless, heroic bravery.

But now, Governor DeSantis, bless him, has elevated this courageous and brilliant jurist to the Florida Supreme Court, over a wide field of competition. Both Governor DeSantis and Judge Tanenbaum deserve substantial credit for turning the tide and ending the pandemic nightmare. Once again, I thank them both on everyone’s behalf.

Congratulations, Judge Tanenbaum, on your well-deserved appointment!