A state appeals court Friday rejected requests by environmental groups for a rehearing after it ruled last month that a legal battle about conservation funding was “moot.”
The 1st District Court of Appeal, as is common, did not explain its decision for denying motions for rehearing.
The long-running legal battle stemmed from a 2014 constitutional amendment that required setting aside a portion of real-estate documentary stamp tax revenues in what is known as the Land Acquisition Trust Fund for conservation efforts.
Environmental groups said the money is supposed to go to buying and managing additional property and contended in consolidated lawsuits that the state improperly diverted money to other expenses.
The allegations involved state budget decisions for the 2015-2016 fiscal year.
The legal fight started in 2015, but wrangling continued for years and included decisions by the 1st District Court of Appeal and the Florida Supreme Court.
A three-judge panel of the appeals court last month agreed with a 2022 decision by Leon County Circuit Judge J. Lee Marsh that the case had become moot. The panel said the environmental groups “challenged only the validity of specific 2015-16 appropriations, asking the trial court to order those funds returned to the LATF (Land Acquisition Trust Fund).
Once those appropriations were completed or reverted and the fiscal year ended, however, no remedy remained within reach of the active complaint as pleaded, through no fault of the defendants. The claims were moot.”
But in seeking a rehearing, the groups argued that the dispute was not moot because they were seeking what is known as a “declaratory judgment” about the use of the money.
One of the motions, filed by an attorney for Florida Defenders of the Environment, said the “Legislature has continually appropriated LATF monies for purposes far different from acquiring conservation lands in order to displace expending general revenues to fund them.
Determining whether the Legislature acted and acts unconstitutionally in doing that is the chief purpose of this litigation.”
