Stephen Brown, Esq., mediator, realtor and partner in the East Orlando law firm Brown & Rice,  is challenging incumbent Circuit Court Judge Craig McCarthy in the Aug. 20 election for Group 43 Ninth Judicial Circuit. McCarthy was appointed in 2022 by Gov. Ron DeSantis to fill the vacancy left by retired judge Bob LeBlanc. (LeBlanc has endorsed Brown.)

Early voting takes place Aug. 5-18, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily. Check our list for locations. Mail-in ballots can be mailed or dropped off at any early voting location but must be at the Supervisor of Elections office by 7 p.m. on Aug. 20.

This is a highly contentious race. Brown told a July 14 gathering for the League of Women Voters of Orange County, Florida that he’s running for the bench “because my opponent wrote a book — CourtZero (self published, 2004) —  in which he professed that he had lost faith in the court system and that everyone who read the book should also have no faith in the court system.” Brown, a one-time Eagle Scout, said that judges “have to really believe in our court system and in our democracy.” He added, “That’s why it’s very, very important to look at who is being appointed to be our judges in Central Florida. Our judges in Central Florida should match our values in Central Florida.”

Well-rounded experience

Brown is well-credentialed. As an undergraduate, he pursued two bachelors of science degrees — one with a double major — in his four years at Florida State University. He’s certified by the Florida Supreme Court for Mediation in all five areas: circuit civil, county, appellate, family and dependency. He even holds a real estate broker’s license. He’s taught legal studies at Keiser University.

Brown advocates for well-rounded experience on the bench. At campaign events, he routinely points out that between McCarthy and himself, he is the only one to have tried jury trials and the only one to have experience on both the prosecution side, as an assistant state attorney, and the defense, as a criminal defense attorney.

He also balances a literal reading of statute with some “spirit of the law” interpretation.  "Of course, we have to follow the law and defer to text of the law," he told VoxPopuli, "but also we should not be holding us in he 21st century to what people knew in the 16th century or 17th or 18th centuries. This idea of going back and looking at the history of what words mean, that's questionable to me. But certainly there has to be a lot of deference to what the legislature actually wrote."  

Unlike McCarthy, Brown is not a member of the Federalist Society, the conservative legal organization that has sought to shift the judiciary to the right over the last 36 years. He is unabashedly liberal, earning endorsements from outgoing Democratic State Sen. Victor Torres and the LGBTQ Victory Fund. He is also endorsed by Cheryl Brown Henderson, daughter of the name plaintiff in the landmark case, Brown v. Brown of Education of Topeka, which ended segregation in public schools.

He announced he was pro-choice in a July 30 Facebook post, saying, “I will always uphold the law, no matter what it is, but I believe in transparency. In my race for circuit judge, I am the only pro-choice candidate. Your values and beliefs matter, and so does your right to make informed decisions.” 

Brown maintains membership in numerous organizations. He’s a lifetime member of the NAACP and belongs to the Paul C. Perkins Bar Association, which serves Black attorneys; Hispanic Bar Association of Central Florida; Greater Orlando Asian American Bar Association; Central Florida Gay & Lesbian Law Association; Central Florida Association for Women Lawyers; Osceola County Bar Association; Orange County Bar Association; League of Women Voters of Orange County, Florida and the National Eagle Scout Association.

Anti-McCarthy

Brown may or may not have eventually run for judge, but he is particularly piqued by McCarthy, who, as he states on his site, was appointed by DeSantis, and now needs a proper vetting. It irks him that McCarthy does not hold court on Fridays — McCarthy told the League of Women Voters forum he reserves that day for writing, emergency motions and continuances.

Brown disagreed with that strategy, saying that as public servants, they should be working five days a week “for the salary that you all are paying.” Circuit judges earn $182,060 annually. Brown added that being a judge may “involve working more than 9 to 5. If you have court all day, you may have to go home and start writing.”

Most of Brown’s beef with McCarthy stems from the short book, CourtZero, he wrote and self published about 20 years ago, in which he criticizes what he sees as judicial activism and argues for reducing funding for courts and decreasing the court’s power.

Brown is particularly incensed by McCarthy’s discussion of judicial activism with regard to the 1954 landmark case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, which ended segregation in public schools.

McCarthy states segregation was wrong in the book. But Brown argues that because McCarthy described the landmark ruling as “tortured reasoning,” McCarthy believes “a whole generation of little children should have remained segregated until Congress acted 10 years later,” as Brown wrote on his site. Rather than Brown being described as “tortured reasoning,” he argued, Plessy v. Ferguson, which established the constitutional justifiction for segregation with the “separate but equal” doctrine in 1896, should have been decided with the same reasoning as Brown — that it violated the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause.

McCarthy responded to this analysis in the Orlando Sentinel forum, saying that Brown had misinterpreted the excerpt. He said he argued in the book that Plessy v. Ferguson was an overreach of the court and that Brown v. Board was necessary to change that.

“What I wrote is that the court in Plessy, the separate but equal doctrine, gave legitimacy to every bigoted attitude held by unjust public officials,” McCarthy said in the Sentinel forum, “And I lamented that Brown v. Board was ever necessary.”

He added that Brown’s claims were “an example of a reading comprehension problem.”

The Sentinel endorsed McCarthy, saying Brown’s “sharp legal mind seems to be coupled with a tendency to take disputes a little too far.”

In June, McCarthy sent Brown a cease and desist email for copyright infringement for posting excerpts of the book. Brown responded that his posts fall under fair use.

His Facebook is similarly filled with anti-McCarthy posts. On July 12, he posted that he “will continue to release rantings from my opponent’s manifesto every day until the election.”

Not everyone welcomed that.

“We are inundated and overwhelmed by political attack ads and negative campaigning, I hope you’ll get back to positive campaigning,” one commenter noted.