Fred Lewis, former Florida Supreme Court justice, dead at 78

Former Florida Chief Justice R. Fred Lewis has died at age 78, the court announced Thursday.

His death came Tuesday, the court said in a press release. He will lie in state in the court’s rotunda on June 11 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. The justices will receive the body and Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz will deliver remarks.

A service is planned for 11 a.m. on June 12 in the courtroom.

Former Gov. Lawton Chiles placed Lewis on the court in 1998 and he took his turn as chief justice from 2006 to 2008. He retired in 2019, one of three veteran justices forced into mandatory retirement after turning 70.

That allowed the then-new governor, Ron DeSantis, to place Federalist Society-trained conservatives on the court who repudiated much of the old court’s jurisprudence.

For example, in 2020 the new court four times reversed its own precedents to make it easier for the state to put people to death.

In 2024, the court overruled another precedent that established a right to abortion access under the Florida Constitution’s Privacy Clause. That allowed DeSantis and the Legislature to ban abortions after 15-weeks’ gestation and then after six weeks.

He described his motivation for service in 1998.

“I offer eyes and ears that can not only see and listen, but also understand and hear human difficulties,” Lewis wrote. “My lessons of life came from being born into generations of coal miners in the mountains of West Virginia and the sense of community and human interaction necessary for survival at that time.”