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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 14, 2025

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Even so, the AG has no power over the police in general. So at least at this phase of the litigation, it would seem that the TRO would only affect the defendants of the lawsuit, which would include the AG and anyone under their control.

That's not how it works. First, the police do not have the authority to enforce the law, strictly speaking. Their job is to investigate crimes and provide evidence to the local prosecutors, who are the ones actually in charge of enforcing the laws; no matter how good a case he thinks he has, a cop can't force prosecution if the DA drops the charges. That out of the way, there are some practical reasons why the AG is the defendant in these kinds of cases. While the AG generally doesn't have any supervisory authority over local prosecutor offices, they are still officially responsible for enforcement of the laws in the state. When a plaintiff mounts a facial challenge to a law, the state invariably takes a position on that challenge. If instead you require suits against 67 county prosecutors you get 67 different positions depending on what the DA thinks, and none of those positions may be in accordance with what the government thinks. Similarly, if your guy is in rural Bubb County and out of expedience you only sue the Bubb County prosecutor now you have some rural, part-time prosecutor charged with taking a position on a law that could affect the entire state going forward. If you change the procedure so that the court ruling can only affect Bubb County, then you wind up with a situation where you have a law that ostensibly applies in the entire state but has 67 different meanings depending on what county you're in. Having the AG stand in as defendant allows the Florida government to argue a position on how Florida law should be interpreted.

This suit is actually against 69 different county prosecutors, so your logic is flawed. Check the linked pdf in my top comment.