A bill to name a federal courthouse in Florida after the first Black man to serve on the Florida Supreme Court was set to pass the House last month and become law with broad bipartisan support.
Rep. Andrew Clyde Stopped Bipartisan Deal To Honor Black Judge
Credit: msnbc.com
April 13, 2022

You remember Rep. Andrew McClyde! He's the guy who called the Jan. 6th insurrection "a normal tourist visit." Via Yahoo News:

A bill to name a federal courthouse in Tallahassee, Florida, after Justice Joseph W. Hatchett, the first Black man to serve on the Florida Supreme Court — sponsored by the state’s two Republican senators and backed unanimously by its 27 House members — was set to pass the House last month and become law with broad bipartisan support.

But in a last-minute flurry, Republicans abruptly pulled their backing with no explanation and ultimately killed the measure, leaving its fate unclear, many of its champions livid and some of its newfound opponents professing ignorance about what had happened.

Asked what made him vote against a measure that he had co-sponsored, Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., was brief and blunt.

“I don’t know,” he said.

Here's what happened. Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia passed around an article from 1999 about an appeals court decision that Hatchett wrote that year that struck down a public school policy allowing student-approved prayers at graduation ceremonies in Florida.

“He voted against student-led school prayer in Duval County in 1999,” said Clyde, a deacon at his Baptist church in Bogart, Georgia. “I don’t agree with that. That’s it. I just let the Republicans know that information on the House floor. I have no idea if they knew that or not.”

You get that? A judge made a constitutional ruling instead of one that pleased religious extremists, and now Republicans are too afraid of their own base to name a courthouse after him!

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