{"id":238781,"date":"2026-04-20T11:31:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T11:31:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/238781\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T11:31:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T11:31:15","slug":"uthmeier-in-tampa-appearance-talks-hope-florida-uf-teaching-position-guns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/238781\/","title":{"rendered":"Uthmeier in Tampa appearance talks Hope Florida, UF teaching position, guns"},"content":{"rendered":"

TAMPA \u2014 For a man who\u2019s been in his job for 14 months<\/a>, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has had the uncanny ability to generate an inordinate amount of headlines, sometimes for some quite controversial decisions.<\/p>\n

While that could help his name recognition as he goes before the voters for the first time in his life in November, it also creates potential pitfalls.<\/p>\n

Take the issue of guns.<\/p>\n

A year ago, Uthmeier announced<\/a> that he and Gov. Ron DeSantis believed that Florida\u2019s 2018 law banning individuals under 21 years of age from purchasing long guns was unconstitutional, so therefore he was directing his office not to defend it.<\/p>\n

Then, in September, after the First District Court of Appeals ruled that the 1987 law banning open carry in Florida was unconstitutional<\/a>, the AG declared that in light of that ruling he was declaring that open carry is now the law of the state.<\/a><\/p>\n

Most recently, he has contended that the Florida law banning convicted felons from possessing firearms is\u00a0unconstitutional<\/a> when it relates to people who have not committed a violent crime and are considered \u201cnondangerous.\u201d That\u2019s despite strong pushback<\/a> from all 20 of Florida\u2019s state attorneys, Republicans and Democrats alike.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere I make these decisions not to enforce certain Florida laws, that is based on the oath I take,\u201d Uthmeier told a crowd of more that 100 people who gathered Friday at the Cuban Club in Tampa\u2019s Ybor City for the Tampa Tiger Bay Club\u2019s monthly meeting. \u201cMy first oath to the people of Florida when I put up my hand is to uphold and defend our Constitution.\u201d<\/p>\n

Uthmeier, 38, joined the governor\u2019s office as deputy general counsel in 2019 and later became general counsel. He graduated from the University of Florida and earned his law degree from Georgetown University.<\/p>\n

Hope Florida controversy
He was serving as DeSantis\u2019 chief of staff in 2024 when he chaired a political action committee (called Keep Florida Clean) working to defeat Amendment 3, which would have legalized recreational cannabis if approved. That political committee\u2019s work was boosted by $10 million recovered from a Medicaid overbilling settlement and routed through the Hope Florida Foundation.<\/p>\n

Hope Florida is a community-based, state-wide welfare assistance initiative launched in 2021 by First Lady Casey DeSantis.<\/p>\n

A grand jury was empaneled in Leon County last year to investigate possible criminal wrongdoing from that settlement. In February, the Florida Trident<\/a> reported that the grand jury investigating the case had produced a report \u2014 called a presentment \u2014 which remains confidential while a legal challenge by the Florida Center for Government Accountability plays out.<\/p>\n

The Miami Herald recently reported<\/a> that Uthmeier declined to say whether he has asked a judge to keep the grand jury report secret.<\/p>\n

During a Q&A with Tampa Tiger Bay Club members on Friday, radio talk-show host Shelley Reback asked Uthmeier whether he had objected to releasing the report and, if he hadn\u2019t, why won\u2019t he call for its release?<\/p>\n

Uthmeier responded that by law he\u2019s not allowed to confirm or deny that there is grand jury report, adding that \u201cnobody did anything wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis has been a politically motivated and media-driven farce,\u201d he said, noting that his work with Keep Florida Clean was voluntary and that he was fighting against a proposal that would have allowed \u201csomebody to have a constitutional right to possess 150 joints and smoke it right here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Civil rights laws no longer valid?
On the Martin Luther King Jr. federal holiday in January, Uthmeier provocatively declared in an advisory legal opinion<\/a> that more than 80 state laws aimed at protecting minority employees and businesses were no longer valid, arguing they violated the 14th Amendment\u2019s Equal Protection Clause.<\/p>\n

\u201cFlorida laws requiring race-based state action are presumptively unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment,\u201d he said in a social media post<\/a> announcing the opinion.<\/p>\n

A group of Black Democratic lawmakers blasted<\/a> the move days later in the Capitol. Some insisted Uthmeier should be suspended for his actions, since DeSantis did the same to Democratic state attorneys Andrew Warren in 2022 and Monique Worrell in 2023.<\/p>\n

The attorney general disagreed. \u201cThey were picking and choosing what laws to enforce based on their own policy preferences, not based on any question of constitutionality or legality,\u201d he said of the local prosecutors.<\/p>\n

Over the past year, Uthmeier has been aggressive in threatening to remove locally elected officials in Florida over policies on working with the federal government on immigration enforcement. Most recently, they included Tampa Mayor Jane Castor.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIf somebody\u2019s indicating that they\u2019re no longer going to engage in the 287(g) process, you\u2019re no longer going to provide support when asked, without a good justification, you\u2019re breaking the law,\u201d he asserted, referring to the formal, voluntary partnerships between U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and local law enforcement agencies.<\/p>\n

He added that once he provided that information to Castor, she realized, \u201cI better be square with the law, so she decided to pull back and changed her position.\u201d<\/p>\n

The attorney general didn\u2019t back down when he was accused by another audience member of being part of an administration that has shown \u201chostility\u201d towards the LGBTQ youth community. Uthmeier replied that, while he respected the LGBTQ community, \u201cthis effort to trans and mutate children has got to stop,\u201d generating a mixture of boos and cheers.<\/p>\n

He went on to boast that his office has brought legal actions against several healthcare associations that have encouraged parents to engage in what some call gender reassignment surgery and others as gender-affirming care. And then he got personal, referring to his six-year-old daughter as a \u201ctomboy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe wants to dress like her brother,\u201d he said. \u201cShe wants to run out and kick the soccer ball. She\u2019s not in public school but I\u2019d be worried if she was because somebody might say, \u2018You can be a man if you want to be a man,’\u201d a comment that mostly elicited boos.<\/p>\n

UF law side gig
One question that seemed to catch the attorney general off-balance involved the revelation first reported by the\u00a0Miami Herald<\/a> that he is making $100,000 a year as an adjunct professor at the University of Florida\u2019s Levin College of Law for two hours of instruction per week, a salary that makes him the highest-paid adjunct law professor at UF in at least a quarter century.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the students get a lot out of it,\u201d he said, a sentence he repeated two more times in his response. He added the the media haven\u2019t reported that Florida State University \u201cfor years has had an even higher-paid position for our Solicitor General Office,\u201d a position now held by Jeffrey DeSousa.<\/p>\n

According to the office of attorney general\u2019s website,<\/a> Florida\u2019s solicitor general serves as the Richard Ervin Visiting Professor at the Florida State University College of Law. The Phoenix reached out to the FSU College of Law to confirm Uthmeier\u2019s statement. A spokesperson said that the school was \u201cprocessing the request.\u201d<\/p>\n

A member of the Tampa Tiger Bay Club was happy to have Uthmeier appear in person, as the club\u2019s previous entreaties to top GOP elected officials over the years have always been declined.<\/p>\n

Uthmeier is expected to face former Democratic state Sen. Jos\u00e9 Javier Rodr\u00edguez in the general election for attorney general in November.<\/p>\n

Florida Phoenix<\/a> is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA \u2014 For a man who\u2019s been in his job for 14 months, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238782,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-238781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238781\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}