Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has selected Adam Tanenbaum, now a judge on Florida’s First District Court of Appeal and former general counsel to the Florida House of Representatives, to serve on the Florida Supreme Court.
In doing so, DeSantis has now appointed six of the seven justices serving on the high court.
DeSantis made the announcement at Seminole High School in Pinellas County, from which Tanenbaum graduated in 1989.
Tanenbaum will fill the seat vacated by Justice Charles Canady, who left the court at the of end of last year after 17 years to became director and a professor at the University of Florida Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education.
In his speech, Tanenbaum referred to himself as an originalist, the judicial philosophy that judges should interpret the Constitution according to its original public meaning that has been embraced by conservatives in recent decades.
“As an originalist, I subscribe to the fixation thesis and the constraint principle,” he said. “The meaning of a text is fixed at the time of its ratification or enactment. And that original meaning does not change over time.”
He went on to say that he shared Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ view “that the judiciary exercises neither force or will, only judgement. That our goal as judges is always to find the correct, original meaning of the law. To instead follow erroneous interpretations of the past, is to essentially make the law, usurping in the process the Legislature’s and the people’s authority.”
DeSantis lauded Tanenbaum’s intellect, referring to how he graduated first in his class at both Seminole High School and at the University of Florida.
Tanenbaum had a background in conservative politics before he got into law. He worked as an intern in 1994 for Newt Gingrich’s GOPAC, a Republican state and local political training organization. He then worked as a summer intern for Florida GOP U.S. Senator Connie Mack in 1995. And he served as public counsel for a couple of months for the Republican Party of Florida in 2001.
He also worked in private practice, as well as serving as a public defender for both the state of Florida and the federal government.
In 2014, he began working for various state agencies. He became the chief deputy solicitor general for the Florida Department of Legal Affairs in 2014-2015.
In 2015 he became general counsel for the Florida Department of State and then general counsel for the Florida House during Speaker Richard Corcoran’s term in 2016-2018. He was appointed by DeSantis to serve on the First District Court of Appeal in Tallahassee on Nov. 1, 2019.
“I was talking to some of my guys after I interviewed the judge,” DeSantis said Wednesday. “It’s like, we’ve got 23-plus million people, you know, in the state of Florida. And I would guarantee you, you will not find 10 people out of that 23 million that knows more about Florida government — not just law, and Supreme Court and courts, but the agencies, the legislative branch, all that — than Judge Tanenbaum. He knows this stuff very, very well.”
While serving on the First District Court of Appeal, heard Byrd v. Black Voters Matter Capacity Bldg. Inst. (2022 and 2025), a high-profile challenge to a redistricting plan that eliminated minority-access voting districts. The state ultimately prevailed.
He was part of a three-judge panel of that court in 2021 that ruled in favor of the DeSantis administration to punish school districts that insisted on strict face-masking policies against COVID-19 in defiance of the governor’s insistence that parents be allowed to opt out for their children.
The appointment of Tanenbaum to the Florida Supreme Court won plaudits from the Florida Justice Reform Institute.
“Judge Adam Tanenbaum is an exceptional choice for the Florida Supreme Court,” said president William Large. “His extensive legal experience, combined with his dedication to public service, demonstrates he is deeply committed to the State of Florida and upholding the rule of law.”
Jorge Labarga is now the lone justice serving on the Florida Supreme Court who was not appointed by DeSantis. He was appointed to the court by then Gov. Charlie Crist in 2009. He is 73 years old, meaning that he must retire due to age term-limits before the 2028 election.