Alachua County appealed a decision that blocks the results from the 2024 referendum on at-large districts from being enacted, and the case moved forward Monday with an answer brief filed by the appellees.  

Attorneys for Alachua County filed their first brief in December to kickstart the appeal process within the Florida First District Court of Appeals. The appellees, the group that initially filed a lawsuit calling the referendum illegal, had until March 10 to respond.  

The appellees include former state Sen. Keith Perry, Kimberly Hord, Jose Lopez and Sharla Head.     

Now, Alachua County will work on a reply brief, due within 30 days, before asking for oral arguments. However, the court could also make a decision without oral arguments. 

In its answer brief, Attorney Jeff Childers counters Alachua County’s claim that the lower court erred in two ways: by ruling when there was no present dispute (only the possibility of a future dispute) and by misinterpreting Florida Statutes. He also adds another argument for why the 2024 referendum should remain void, citing the Tipsy Coachman Doctrine. 

First, the brief said the courts must inform voters if a ballot question is valid or not before the election takes place. Childers said the courts don’t need to wait until the election happens to make the determination if the referendum is constitutional.  

“Under well-settled law, the trial court had both the authority and the duty to declare the Amendment invalid before it misled voters,” the brief said. 

Second, the brief sides with the interpretation of Florida Statutes made by Judge Olin Shinholser, who made the initial ruling now being appealed. Childers said Alachua County disregarded the prescribed language laid out by the Florida Legislature for changing a county’s voting districts from at-large to single-member districts.  

Childers’ brief disagrees with Alachua County’s interpretation of Florida Statutes. The county said that subsection 10 of Statute 124.011 prescribes how to place a referendum, switching from single-member districts to at-large districts. That subsection says the procedures in subsection 3 must be followed. 

By following subsection 3 of the statute, the county said it doesn’t need to follow the established wording in the statute—only the manner for calling the election. 

“The County’s interpretation would strip away these essential procedural safeguards, creating a glaring loophole in the law,” Childers said in the brief. “That result is not only unworkable—it is legally indefensible.” 

However, the county claims a plain reading of the statute allows the county to create its own ballot language for this issue. Both sides claim that a plain reading of the law supports their arguments and that the opposition is trying to add meaning to the statutes.  

Even if the court disagrees on the reading of the statute, Childers’ brief also claims that the referendum is void because of the Tipsy Coachman Doctrine. This doctrine is used by appellate courts when a lower court gets to the right result but for the wrong reason, according to The Florida Bar.  

In this case, Childers said voiding the referendum is the correct result because it violates Florida special law, specifically 2022 House Bill 1493, and no local law can overrule a state law. 

Bill 1493 authorized the 2022 referendum about Alachua County’s voting structure, and residents approved it with 51.5% of the vote. Childers said that special law, creating a referendum that gets approved, can’t be overridden by the Board of County Commissioners in a “blatant power grab.” 

In the brief, he said the county would claim to be giving voters a voice with the 2024 referendum that sought to undo the 2022 referendum. The 2024 referendum passed with 72%.  

“But, the County’s rhetoric obscures the reality: it seeks to subvert state law and mislead voters into believing they have the power to reinstate an electoral system that state law does not permit—before the legally mandated system has even had a chance to function,” Childers said in the brief.  

He said the BOCC sought to stop the special law from taking effect by reversing course before the first election with the new system. In the 2024 election, commissioners Mary Alford and Anna Prizzia, who both opposed single-member districts, ran under the system for the first time and won with 64% and 55%, respectively.  

Using the Tipsy Coachman Doctrine, Childers and the appellees have a new argument for the county to rebuff in its next brief.