One of the many things that Republicans, including those in Florida, have complained about President Barack Obama is his use of executive power, most recently of course seen in his executive order dealing with immigration.
Florida is one of the more than two dozen states that late last year joined the lawsuit filed by Texas challenging the president's actions.
At the time Attorney General Pam Bondi contended that her decision to join the other states was not about immigration but to undo what she termed "unwarranted presidential overreach."
"This lawsuit is about President Obama-yet again-overstepping the power granted to him by our United States Constitution," Bondi said.
She then added: "The powers granted to the President are expressly laid out in the United States Constitution, yet President Obama has decided to ignore those parameters."
In Tallahassee this week, Florida Gov. Rick Scott exerted his own kind of executive authority, and one that could theoretically also be challenged as "overreach."
Scott issued an executive order on Tuesday that authorized Education Commissioner Pam Stewart to suspend an 11th grade standardized test that was about to be given to high school juniors this spring.
Scott took the action in response to a testing investigation undertaken by Stewart at his urging last year while he was on the campaign trail. Stewart in her summary of that investigation suggested getting rid of the test even though it was just approved last year and was included in a bill (HB 7031) that repealed mention of Common Core in state law.
The wording of Scott's order was interesting.
First off, Scott asserts that his authority to give Stewart the power to suspend the test is vested in the state constitution. The language he cites is from the first part of Article IV, which states that the governor "has supreme executive power."
Nowhere does Scott contend that there is an emergency that requires him to act now regarding the test.
But the governor kind of acknowledges that he is telling Stewart not to follow the law, saying he is taking action now because the "Legislature will have opportunity to consider repeal of the statutory requirement" that now mandates the test. (It's not clear whether or not lawmakers will in fact do that.)
Florida's governor does not enjoy the same scope of executive power as the president although the governor is arguably more powerful now than two decades ago. Changes in the constitution and state law - especially during the Jeb Bush years - has strengthened the governor's hand.
But usually the only time the governor can suspend or waive the law is when there is an emergency such as a hurricane. Most of the time the governor's executive orders deal with matters as appointing a prosecutor from another judicial circuit to handle a case because another prosecutor has a conflict.
Former Gov. Charlie Crist, however, building on Bush's use of executive orders issued executive orders that privately some Republicans grumbled were not legal, most notably his decision to extend early voting hours during the 2008 election (and which Crist said was justified by an emergency).
One top Republican at the time said it would have created a public relations disaster to sue Crist over the order, not to mention it wasn't clear if a court would act quickly enough to block the order from taking effect.
This wasn't the only time, however, Crist would use an executive order in a legally questionable way.
In his final months in office he issued an executive order that extended jobless benefits approved by Congress even though the Legislature had not authorized it. Crist took the action even though past extensions had been passed by state legislators and it was assumed that the benefits would lapse absent legislative action.
Just as it had happened with the voting executive order, no one challenged Crist's authority that time either.
And that's probably what will happen with Scott as well. It's hard to imagine anyone who would go to court to force 11th graders to take a test.
But this could signal a decision by Scott to be more assertive in his use of executive authority despite signs that he may have a tough time getting fellow Republicans in the Legislature to follow his lead during a second term.
And perhaps when Scott greets Obama on the tarmac in Miami today they could regale each other about the use of executive orders.
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