In August 2022, the Republican governor suspended Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren, complaining that the local prosecutor wasn’t prosecuting the kind of culture war cases DeSantis wanted to see.

A Tampa Bay Times report noted at the time that DeSantis’ order suspending the state attorney did not cite “any specific examples of Warren not prosecuting individual cases, pointing instead to Warren’s public comments on abortion, transgender issues and office policies Warren has adopted.”

The newspaper’s editorial board added that the governor’s move was “politically craven, legally suspect, suspiciously timed and odorously soaked in autocracy, partisanship and bad faith.” Under a headline that reminded DeSantis that he isn’t “the king of Florida,” the Times went on to characterize the suspension as a “gross abuse of power.”

The 11th US circuit Court of Appeals has apparently agreed