Key Points

  • The First District Court of Appeal reversed a Leon County circuit court order and directed full expungement of a grand jury presentment on the $10 million Centene settlement payment to the Hope Florida Foundation.
  • The court held that a grand jury that declares conduct unlawful but returns no indictment, and condemns unindicted people by name, acts outside its lawful authority under section 905.28(1) and the Florida Supreme Court's Brautigam decision.
  • The court held that the misappropriation conclusion misapplied sections 45.062 and 216.216, which reach court actions and court settlements, because the matter settled before suit and the $10 million never passed through the State.
  • As an independent ground, the court held that the State Attorney's emailing of the confidential presentment to recipients who were not individuals concerned violated section 905.28(1) and required expungement; Judge Bilbrey would have rested the expungement on that ground alone.
  • The court reversed orders directing the State Attorney to notify press intervenors of any appeal, with the State agreeing.

A Florida appeals court on Wednesday ordered a Leon County grand jury's report on a $10 million Medicaid settlement payment to the Hope Florida Foundation removed from court records in its entirety, holding that the grand jury exceeded its power by declaring the money "misappropriated" while indicting no one.

A three-judge panel of the First District Court of Appeal reversed Leon County Circuit Judge James Lee Marsh, who had stripped roughly 112 of the report's 116 pages but refused to expunge the rest. Judge Neff wrote for the court, joined by Judge M.K. Thomas. Judge Bilbrey agreed with the result but would have rested it on one ground alone: the State Attorney's distribution of the confidential report to people not entitled to see it.

Florida grand juries may investigate public offices and issue reports even when they charge no crime. The decision holds that this reporting power stops short of accusation without indictment. "A grand jury may investigate and report, but it may not declare conduct unlawful and then decline to charge it, and it may not condemn people by name without indicting them," Neff wrote. The court held separately that the State's premature release of the report, known as a presentment, independently required its expungement.

The case grew out of a September 2024 resolution of allegations that Centene Corporation had overcharged Florida's Medicaid program. Of the $67,048,611 settlement, the State received $57,048,611, and $10 million went as a donation to the Hope Florida Foundation, a direct-support organization. Hope Florida then approved $5 million grants to two section 501(c)(4) groups, Secure Florida's Future and Save Our Society From Drugs, which donated to Keep Florida Clean, a political committee opposing a proposed recreational-marijuana amendment.

The grand jury began investigating in August 2025. On Jan. 28, 2026, it issued a 116-page document concluding that the $10 million was "misappropriated as part of a sophisticated scheme to fund political activities." The presentment conceded there was insufficient evidence to charge anyone criminally and recommended that the Legislature act. Its sixteen numbered findings named several individuals.

Under section 905.28(1), Florida Statutes, a presentment unaccompanied by an indictment is confidential. It may not be published until each individual concerned gets a copy and 15 days to move to repress the report, which bars publication, or to expunge any portion that is "improper and unlawful."

The panel held that the misappropriation conclusion failed on the law. The two statutes the grand jury cited reach only court actions and court settlements, and no civil action had been filed. The money also "was never expended or received by the State," the court wrote, having passed directly from Centene to Hope Florida. The grand jury had relied on the statutes' "purpose" and "spirit." Neff answered in a footnote: "A spirit summoned apart from that body is not statutory interpretation; it is hermeneutical necromancy."

The court relied on the Florida Supreme Court's 1957 decision in State ex rel. Brautigam v. Interim Report of Grand Jury, which the panel read to require a grand jury to indict or exonerate. "Having declined to indict, the grand jury retained no jurisdiction to publish individualized findings of criminal-like culpability," Neff wrote. The panel said the circuit court's reasoning that no one was accused of a crime "cannot be reconciled with the principle found in Brautigam." Findings against private grant recipients Mark Wilson and Amy Ronshausen and their groups also fell outside the grand jury's authority, the court held.

A footnote called the document "careless in its grammar, mistaken in its law, and unfaithful to its own record," noting that one finding said the State recovered $800,000 too little from Centene when the settlement figures showed $800,000 more.

On disclosure, the court found that the State Attorney emailed the presentment on Jan. 28 and 29 to at least forty-nine recipients, including Rep. Alex Andrade, the complaining witness, two generic intake addresses and a recipient with no connection to the proceeding. None of those recipients was an individual the report concerned. "The statute protects those a presentment impugns by limiting who receives the document at all, not by trusting those who should never have received it to keep it secret," Neff wrote.

The panel added that accepting a settlement directing a donation to Hope Florida was a discretionary executive act, and that a grand jury, as an arm of the courts, may not condemn it. "The distinction is between reporting on an executive office, which the grand jury may do, and adjudicating the propriety of a valid discretionary executive act and branding it unlawful, which it may not," Neff wrote.

Repression, the court said, could no longer protect anyone. On Aug. 25, the same court had enjoined the State Attorney from disclosing the grand jury matters. The next day, a Miami-based news organization published an unredacted copy of the presentment. Neff wrote that the disclosure "may itself have violated" another provision of the grand jury statutes, but the court expressed "no view on the lawfulness of its publication by the press."

Bilbrey would have ordered expungement "just because the Presentment was improperly disclosed" without reaching its substance. Bilbrey noted that a forensic accountant who assisted the grand jury and Bank of America also received prepublication copies.

With the State agreeing, the panel also reversed three orders directing the State Attorney to notify a news organization and its director of any appeal.

Lawyers for the movants included Jesse Panuccio of Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, who represented Katie Strickland. The State was represented by Acting Attorney General Bradford L. Thomas.

The case returns to the Leon County circuit court with directions to expunge the presentment in its entirety. The ruling is not final until disposition of any timely and authorized motion under Florida Rules of Appellate Procedure 9.330 or 9.331.