As the state continues to fight several lawsuits over challenges to bills passed into law, the legal bill is mounting.
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported Monday that the state’s legal bill for defending several cases challenging laws passed and signed into law during Gov. Rick Scott’s tenure is about $888,000.
While the attorney general’s office often represents the state in such cases, in some, it contracts work out to big outside law firms.
The state has also been the challenger in one case – suing the federal government over the federal health care law, a case the state took to the U.S. Supreme Court and lost. The legal fees for that lawsuit amounted to just under $70,000 the Sun-Sentinel reported.
The state has been sued over its new election law; drug testing of welfare applicants; state worker retirement plans; a law prohibiting doctors from talking about guns, in which the state said Friday it will file an appeal of a lower court rejection of the law; privatization of some prisons, and of prison health care; and teacher merit pay.
