Background
Miguel Rodriguez Albisu and co-petitioners are defendants in criminal proceedings out of Broward County (lower tribunal nos. 062023CF002405A88810 and 062023MM001607A88810), which are now on appeal before Florida’s Fourth District Court of Appeal under case no. 4D2025-3769. Rather than litigating their appeal on the merits, the petitioners sought to disqualify the entire Fourth DCA from hearing the case.
When their disqualification effort failed or was otherwise unavailable at the appellate level, petitioners filed a petition for writ of prohibition in the Florida Supreme Court, asking that court to bar the Fourth DCA from exercising jurisdiction over their appeal. The Supreme Court took up the petition and ruled on the merits.
The Court’s Holding
A six-justice majority — Chief Justice Couriel and Justices Labarga, Muñiz, Grosshans, Francis, and Sasso — denied the petition for writ of prohibition on the merits, without permitting any motion for rehearing. The majority did not issue a written opinion explaining its reasoning beyond the denial itself.
Justice Tanenbaum dissented in part. He agreed that the petitioners were not entitled to the writ, but wrote separately to argue that the petition should have been dismissed rather than denied on the merits. In his view, disqualification is a trial-court procedural mechanism governed by section 38.10, Florida Statutes, and Florida Rule of General Practice and Judicial Administration 2.330; it has no counterpart at the appellate level. Because prohibition lies only to prevent a court from acting without or in excess of jurisdiction, and because no recognized appellate-disqualification procedure exists, Justice Tanenbaum concluded there was no valid basis to reach the substance of the petitioners’ argument at all.
Key Takeaways
- The Florida Supreme Court denied a prohibition petition seeking to disqualify the entire Fourth DCA from hearing a pending criminal appeal, leaving the Fourth DCA’s jurisdiction intact.
- Justice Tanenbaum’s partial dissent underscores that judicial disqualification under § 38.10 and Rule 2.330 is a trial-court remedy; there is no parallel disqualification mechanism for Florida appellate courts.
- The majority’s merits denial — rather than a dismissal — drew internal disagreement, with Justice Tanenbaum arguing the proper disposition was dismissal for lack of a cognizable basis for prohibition.
- The Court’s order bars any motion for rehearing, making the denial final.
Why It Matters
The decision reaffirms the limited scope of prohibition as a writ and signals that Florida litigants cannot use it as a vehicle to wholesale disqualify an appellate court. Attempts to transplant the trial-level disqualification framework into appellate proceedings will not succeed — and, per Justice Tanenbaum’s analysis, should not even be entertained on the merits.
For criminal defense practitioners in Florida, the case is a cautionary note: strategic efforts to remove an entire appellate panel through disqualification doctrine face not only a high bar but a threshold procedural obstacle that may prevent any merits review whatsoever.