Left: Former Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, D-Orlando, applauds on the floor of the House of Representatives Thursday, April 21, 2022 at the Capitol in Tallahassee, Fla. (AP Photo/Phil Sears); Right: Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. (Photo by Paul Hennessy / SOPA Images/Sipa USA).
A Florida lawmaker who sued to force Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis to disclose COVID-19 data said the presidential hopeful agreed Monday to reveal the data and pay $152,250 in attorneys fees because DeSantis knew he had been “caught red-handed” lying to the court.
Former state Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, a Democrat, and Florida Center for Government Accountability (FLCGA), a non-profit public records watchdog, began a lawsuit against DeSantis and the Florida Department of Health in 2021 after DeSantis ordered the department not to disclose COVID-19 data on the department’s public dashboard.
Despite the surge of the Delta variant of COVID-19, DeSantis declared Florida “open for business.” During the global pandemic, DeSantis publicly opposed COVID-19 restrictions and slammed school shutdowns as “one of the biggest policy blunders of our time.” Even as the governor muzzled the state’s health department, he bragged, “We followed the data and stood by our parents and students.” DeSantis said that by ignoring “political posturing and fear-mongering,” his administration “did what was right for Floridians.”
Smith, then a member of the Florida House Pandemics & Public Emergencies Committee, submitted a public records request to the health department in 2021, requesting detailed COVID-19 statistics for Orange County. The department denied the request on the grounds that the requested information was confidential and exempt from public disclosure.
Thereafter, FLGCA received a similar response to a similar records request for all of Florida’s 67 counties. FLCGA and Smith volleyed by suing DeSantis and the state health department. The lawsuit worked its way through the discovery process and the parties battled over whether the health department must produce an official to sit for a deposition about the decision to restrict release of the data. Ultimately, both the lower court and the appellate court ruled against the state and required the deposition.
During a similar contest over the discovery of documents relating to COVID-19 data, the health department indicated to the courts that the records sought by plaintiffs did not exist. However, the appellate court again ruled against the department and ordered the disclosure of the documents. In March 2023, the documents requested by plaintiffs were produced by the health department.
Smith said Tuesday that the production of the documents previously said to be nonexistent lead to DeSantis and the health department immediately agreeing to settle the case.
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“They broke the law,” Smith said about the Florida officials in a television appearance Tuesday. “They know that they lied to the judge in court when they said that they didn’t have these COVID-19 records and that was the reason they weren’t producing them.”
“They know that they were wrong, they know that they broke the law, and our lawsuit caught them red-handed,” Smith continued.
“They were hiding this information from the public,” said FLCGA Director of Public Access Initiatives Michael Barfield in the same on-air appearance. “So taxpayers lost $300,000 and didn’t get the information that they are constitutionally entitled to.”
The terms of the settlement agreement require the health department to provide detailed COVID-19 data for the next 3 years, including vaccination counts, case counts, and deaths, aggregated weekly, by county, age group, gender, and race. Additionally, the department is required to pay $152,250 in attorneys’ fees to the plaintiffs and to make a payment in the same amount for its own attorneys’ fees.
In a statement about the settlement Tuesday, Smith said, “All Floridians have a constitutional right to public records and the right to receive critical public health data in a timely manner in order to make informed decisions impacting the health and safety of their families,” and slammed DeSantis and the health department for making “a decision that cost many lives.”
“The Department hid public records during the height of the pandemic to fit a political narrative that Florida was open for business,” said Barfield. “Transparency and accountability are not negotiable. The Constitution mandates it.”
DeSantis’ office and the Florida Department of Health did not respond to request for comment.
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