The First District Court of Appeals in Florida ordered on Wednesday the complete removal of the grand jury report that concluded that 10 million dollars from a Medicaid settlement had been funneled to the Hope Florida Foundation and, from there, to political committees linked to Governor Ron DeSantis.
CBS News reported that the 19-page ruling, written by Judge Lance Neff, holds that the agreement was legal and that the grand jury exceeded its authority by publicly condemning individuals who were never charged.
The document in question had been prepared by the Grand Jury of Leon County, which described the operation as a "sophisticated scheme to finance political activities," although it acknowledged that the evidence was insufficient to file charges against anyone.
The court argued that the 10 million dollars were never state money from Florida, as the company Centene transferred them directly to the Hope Florida Foundation without going through the state treasury.
"The money did not reimburse the state for the losses incurred from Centene's surcharges, nor did it become the property of the state of Florida, as the transfer of funds was directly from Centene to Hope Florida," the ruling states.
The court also rejected the central argument of the grand jury: that state law prohibits executive agencies from entering into agreements that benefit third parties. According to the ruling, that rule does not apply because the agreement with Centene was signed before any formal civil lawsuit was filed.
"This matter was resolved before any civil action was filed. Since no civil action had been initiated in a court, no judicial agreement had been reached," the text states.
The ruling also harshly criticized state prosecutor Jack Campbell for distributing the report to 49 recipients —including someone with no connection to the case— before the affected parties could contest it, in violation of confidentiality laws.
"The mistake of the state prosecutor was not failing to notify those individuals. It was an excessively broad handling of a confidential document that violated the confidentiality requirement before the accused could be heard," the resolution concludes.
Judge Neff was appointed to the court by DeSantis in March 2026, two months after the grand jury report was finalized, a detail that critics have not overlooked.
The governor's allies celebrated the decision as a complete vindication. Jeremy Redfern, chief of staff to Attorney General James Uthmeier, wrote on X: "FULL AND TOTAL VICTORY! The grand jury report on the Hope Florida Fraud was completely overturned by the 1st DCA of Florida."
The political impact of the ruling is immediate. The grand jury report, leaked to the press in August 2026 and obtained exclusively by CBS News Miami, had been the main argument for Democrats to link the DeSantis administration with the political use of Medicaid funds.
The decision could weaken one of the main campaign arguments used by the Democrats against the DeSantis administration. With the document removed, the Democratic candidate for governor David Jolly loses a powerful tool less than four weeks before the general elections on November 3.
The Republican Byron Donalds, endorsed by Donald Trump and with Cuban-American Senator Bryan Ávila as his running mate, was leading Jolly by seven points in a Mason-Dixon poll released this week.
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