South Florida Sun Sentinel: Trump’s judicial picks fail Florida and U.S.
This excerpt is from a piece that originally ran on July 22, 2025.
At the Fourth District Court of Appeal in West Palm Beach, Artau wrote a concurring opinion that conspicuously flattered Trump at a time when Artau was lobbying for his eventual appointment to a federal judgeship in Miami. The timing alone raises obvious ethical questions.
Pratt, now a nominee for a Florida Middle District vacancy, wrote the opinion in May in which the Fifth District Court of Appeal at Daytona Beach overturned the Florida law enabling minors to obtain a judge’s permission for an abortion rather than seek it from her parents.
Pratt invoked a far-fetched legal theory that the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gives parents an inherent right to be informed and to consent.
The Alliance for Justice, a liberal coalition of more than 135 organizations, opposes Pratt for “ideological extremism” and a “rigid worldview that prioritizes religious privilege, diminishes civil rights and threatens public safety.”
Artau’s case stands out, however, for what Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., called his “less measured approach” to Trump’s lawsuit against individual members of the Pulitzer Prize Board for refusing to retract awards to the Washington Post and New York Times.