Navigating With a New Map: Impact of Changes to the District Courts of Appeal Territorial Boundaries.

• Author: Moore, Thomasina F.
• Position: Florida

On January 1, 2023, Florida's district court map is changing: A new Sixth District Court of Appeal has been created. "The creation of an additional district and changes to the territorial boundaries of other districts are milestone events that have not occurred since the creation of the Fifth District Court of Appeal in 1979." (1) To make way for the new court, the geographic boundaries of the First, Second, and Fifth districts will all change. These changes in boundaries present logistical and practical concerns for the courts and the practitioner. This article addresses the path to approval of the new district, the contours of the new map, how the change affects both individuals and state entities, and discusses practical considerations for navigating the new map.

The District Court of Appeal Workload and Jurisdiction Assessment Committee

The journey to changing the layout of the district courts began in earnest on May 6, 2021, when the Supreme Court issued an administrative order creating the District Court of Appeal Workload and Jurisdiction Assessment Committee to aid the court in its annual determination of the necessity for increasing, decreasing, or redefining appellate districts as required by Fla. Const. art. V, [section]9. (2) The committee was charged with conducting a review in accordance with Rule of General Practice and Judicial Administration 2.241. (3) Rule 2.241 requires an evaluation of the district courts' effectiveness, efficiency, access to appellate review, professionalism, and public trust and confidence. (4) Representative members from each existing judicial circuit were appointed, with Judge Ed Scales being appointed as chair. (5)

Pursuant to art. V, [section]9, the court must file its report prior to the beginning of the legislative session. Therefore, the committee was given a tight deadline, to file its report: October 1, 2021. (6) To fulfill its charge, the committee met six times. The meetings were structured around data gathering and analysis, survey reviews, and a public hearing. (7) Committee members also relied on available quantitative and qualitative information, and their collective judgment as judges and legal practitioners to evaluate the districts according to the criteria established in rule.

Although all data showed that Florida's district courts are currently functioning well, a majority of the committee members recommended the creation of at least one additional district court. (8) The fifth factor set forth in Rule 2.241--public trust and confidence--served as the main rationale for the majority recommendation. (9) Specifically, the majority of the committee members felt creation of a new district court would

foster public trust and confidence by aligning the district courts with future growth of the state and making the number of judges on each court more comparable, and will enhance diversity and circuit representation among the applicants for appellate judicial vacancies. A number of members of the Committee also believe that creation of an additional district court will contribute to enhanced effectiveness, efficiency, access to appellate review, and professionalism, thereby indirectly complementing the other four criteria in Rule 2.241. (10) A minority of the committee members favored maintaining the existing jurisdictional boundaries of the five district courts. (11) These minority members felt the data the committee reviewed, when applied to the five criteria prescribed in Rule 2.241, did not establish a need to change the boundaries of the existing district courts. (12) Reasons cited by the minority included the performance statistics for the courts, the survey results, and public hearing comments. (13)

The Supreme Court Opinion Certifying the Need for Change

All but one member of the Supreme Court agreed with the committee's majority recommendation, both as to the need for a new district court as well as the recommendation that new appellate judgeships were needed for the newly aligned district courts of appeal. The court's opinion discussed the "primary rationale" for the committee's recommendation noting:

A salient issue relevant to this criterion is the serious underrepresentation among district court judges of judges from within the Fourth Judicial Circuit, which contains Jacksonville, one of Florida's largest metropolitan areas. Under the current configuration of district courts, the Fourth Judicial Circuit generates 29 percent of the filings of the First District Court, but only two judges--constituting 13 percent of the judges on the First District Court--are from the Fourth Judicial Circuit. Even more striking, the population of the Fourth Circuit--with its 2 out of 15 DCA judges--makes up 37.5% of the population of the current First District. Although no district court configuration will perfectly address every relevant consideration, the configuration proposed in the Committee's plurality plan would help address this geographical anomaly existing in the current district court system. (14) After noting "the [c]ourt continues to use a verified objective weighted caseload methodology as a primary basis for assessing judicial need," the court found there was no need for either certification or decertification of additional judgeships in the existing district courts based on that methodology. (15)

However, the court did not stop there. The court next considered the implications of...