Florida’s First District Court of Appeal ruled unanimously on Oct. 7, 2026, that a Tallahassee grand jury exceeded its authority in its report on the Hope Florida Foundation, and ordered the entire report expunged from court records.
The report, completed in January, had described the handling of a $10 million payment as a “sophisticated scheme” to fund political activity, but said there was insufficient evidence to charge anyone. The appeals court rejected its conclusion that the money was misappropriated, finding the $10 million “was never public money,” CBS News Miami reported.
Judge Lance Neff wrote the opinion, according to WLRN. The court said the state law the grand jury relied on did not apply because no civil action had been filed, and that the Centene settlement that produced the money was legal because it resolved alleged overpayments.
The court held that a grand jury may investigate and report findings or recommend changes to state law, but cannot accuse people of criminal conduct without indicting them. It wrote that the report “brands the named participants” as members of a “sophisticated scheme” while conceding there was not enough evidence to charge anyone, WLRN reported. CBS News Miami quoted the opinion as calling the report “careless in its grammar, mistaken in its law, and unfaithful to its own record.”
The panel also faulted Leon County State Attorney Jack Campbell. CBS News Miami reported the court found his office sent the report to at least 49 recipients before the people it criticized had a chance to seek expungement under Florida law, which the court called an independent reason to expunge it.
The money at the centre of the case came from Centene Corp., a health-care company that settled Medicaid overcharge allegations with Florida for $67 million. Under that deal, $57 million went to the state and $10 million went to the Hope Florida Foundation, a charity connected to First Lady Casey DeSantis, both outlets reported.
The foundation later approved two $5 million grants to nonprofits that donated to a political committee opposing Florida’s 2024 recreational marijuana amendment, CBS News Miami reported. The grand jury report, which was never publicly released, was first reported by CBS News Miami reporter Jim DeFede in late August.
Gov. Ron DeSantis welcomed the decision at a news briefing in Miami on Oct. 8. “The kangaroo court is over,” he said, and called it “the biggest judicial smackdown that I have ever seen in my entire career as an elected official,” according to WLRN. He has called the investigation a hoax and has demanded a criminal investigation into how the confidential report was leaked.
Attorney General James Uthmeier, who chaired the political committee that received money from the foundation’s grants, stood at the podium after the governor but said he did not have much to add, WLRN reported. The court’s opinion does not mention him, according to the same report. Uthmeier faces Democrat Jose Javier Rodriguez in the November election, WGCU reported earlier.
Democrats criticized the outcome. Florida Democratic Party chair Nikki Fried said the ruling did not change what happened, noting that those challenging the report were heard while no one defended the grand jury’s evidence, and that Neff was appointed by DeSantis in March. “Erasing the report does not erase those findings,” she said, according to WLRN.
Neither outlet described any further court filings or an appeal as of Oct. 8. Because the report is to be removed from the record, its allegations are no longer an official finding, and the court’s characterization of the money as never having been public is now the operative legal position in the case.
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Via CBS News Miami and WLRN. We did not obtain the court’s 19-page opinion directly; details of it are as reported by those outlets.
