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An appeals court Wednesday upheld a ruling that rejected a long-running legal battle over state conservation funding.
The case was rooted in a 2014 constitutional amendment that requires setting aside a portion of real-estate documentary stamp tax revenues in what is known as the Land Acquisition Trust Fund for conservation efforts.
Environmental groups said the money is supposed to go to buying and managing additional property and contended in the case that the state improperly diverted money to other expenses.
The allegations involved state budget decisions for the 2015-2016 fiscal year.
The legal fight started in 2015, but wrangling continued for years and included decisions by the 1st District Court of Appeal and the Florida Supreme Court.
In Wednesday’s four-page ruling, a three-judge panel of the appeals court agreed with a 2022 decision by Leon County Circuit Judge J. Lee Marsh that the case had become moot.
“Key to our analysis is the narrow scope within which the plaintiffs consistently framed their claims,” said the ruling by Chief Judge Timothy Osterhaus and Judges Susan Kelsey and M. Kemmerly Thomas. “They alone controlled their pleadings, and they challenged only the validity of specific 2015-16 appropriations, asking the trial court to order those funds returned to the LATF (Land Acquisition Trust Fund). Once those appropriations were completed or reverted and the fiscal year ended, however, no remedy remained within reach of the active complaint as pleaded, through no fault of the defendants. The claims were moot.”
