The state filed a brief on Thursday with a federal court saying it will appeal a decision temporarily setting aside a controversial law requiring drug tests for welfare recipients in the latest phase of several legal battles over Gov. Rick Scott and the GOP-dominated Legislature’s policies.
“This policy is intended to help Florida families and is an effective way to ensure that welfare dollars are used for the benefit of children and to help Floridians get back to work and off public assistance,” Scott said in a statement after the filing. “I have no doubt that the law is constitutional, and that it is supported by the great weight of judicial authority.”
But the move outraged opponents of the law, who said the injunction granted by the U.S. District Judge Mary Scriven clearly showed that the law crossed the U.S. Constitution’s ban on unreasonable searches. State Rep. Cynthia Stafford (D-Miami), who has filed a bill to overturn the policy, said the tests were “mean-spirited, wasteful and unconstitutional” in a statement lambasting the decision to appeal the case.
“What Governor Scott continues to forget is that being poor is not a crime, and the state should not attempt to treat poor Floridians as though they are criminal suspects,” said Stafford.
But supporters of the law, including a think tank that Scriven singled out for what she regarded as flawed research buttressing the state’s claims, hailed the decision.
“Our tax dollars should not be used to fund illegal drug addiction that traps children in unsafe homes,” said Tarren Bragdon, a Scott ally and president and CEO of the Foundation for Government Accountability.
The decision in the case of Luis Lebron, a 35-year-old Orlando resident who applied for benefits in July but refused to take a drug test, fueled what has become an increasingly testy relationship between Scott and the Legislature on one side and state and federal courts on the other.
Since Scott took office in January, lawsuits have also been filed challenging his decisions or laws he signed dealing with high-speed rail, rulemaking by executive branch agencies, prison privatization, pension reform and a proposed constitutional amendment allowing state funds to flow to religious social services, as well as the policy requiring state workers to be tested for drugs.
Courts have ruled against Scott on the privatization plan and the rulemaking case. Scott suspended the drug tests for state employees in the face of that lawsuit, and a state judge hearing the case on the pension overhaul also sounded skeptical of the state’s arguments at a hearing last month. The governor won a suit challenging his ability to essentially cancel a high-speed rail project.
In recent days, Scott has sounded exasperated with the continued legal wrangling over the policies.
“I thought there were three branches of government,” the governor told reporters Wednesday. “I thought the legislative branch was supposed to pass the laws and the governor either sign them or not. I didn’t anticipate the judiciary would be making policy decisions, so it’s very disappointing.”