Suspended Broward Judge Gary Farmer submits letter of resignation

Broward Judge Gary Farmer submitted a resignation letter on Friday, months after he was suspended without pay until further notice for inappropriate comments he made from the bench.

Farmer submitted the letter to Chief Administrative Judge Carol-Lisa Phillips, she confirmed to the South Florida Sun Sentinel on Friday night.

The proper procedure requires that he submit the letter to Gov. Ron DeSantis. It was unclear Friday night whether the governor’s office also received Farmer’s letter, but he made his intentions abundantly clear.

Efforts to reach Farmer and his attorney by cellphone Friday night were unsuccessful.

The resignation comes after Farmer was disciplined for what the Judicial Qualifications Commission called “grossly inappropriate comments” he made while presiding over a felony criminal docket on Aug. 15, 2024. Farmer told a defendant who was expecting three children from three different mothers: “Ok, you’ve been busy. You were just shooting all over the place! That’s good, do you know their names? First and last? Romantic, are you?”

Later during the court proceeding, Farmer told the man that a condition of his pre-trial release would be to “wear a condom at all times. For your own good, Ok?! Probation is going to check. No, I’m kidding. I’m kidding,” according to the JQC’s notice of formal charges.

The defendant had been assigned a new attorney, a woman who is married, and Farmer at the end of the hearing told him, “Don’t get her pregnant.” In a separate case that same day, Farmer repeated gay stereotypes from the 1990s sketch comedy show “In Living Color.”

The comments from that day were only a few of several examples of inappropriate behavior in Farmer’s recent proceedings at the time, the JQC said.

Last September, Farmer was moved to the civil court bench as a result of the comments, and the state’s watchdog for judicial misconduct filed charges against him in April and called for his immediate suspension.

Farmer in his response to the charges said his comments were generally “G-rated ‘Dad jokes’” intended to lighten the mood for people facing criminal charges but acknowledged the things he said to the defendant he told to wear a condom were “somewhat racy and, upon reflection, were inappropriate.” He urged the Florida Supreme Court to reject the suspension recommendation because the charges against him did not allege that Broward residents were “victimized by any illegal, dishonest, or immoral conduct.”

Farmer won his seat on the bench in the 2022 general election after spending six years in the Florida Senate, where he served as minority leader until he was removed by his fellow Democrats for Sen. Lauren Book.

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