President Obama Nominates Four Diverse Federal Judges for Florida, Including St. Augustine's Former Assistant City Attorney Carlos Mendoza and a Gay African-American Judge From Miami

President Barack H. Obama today nominated four diverse people to be federal trial judges in Florida, including former St. Augustine Assistant City Attorney Carlos Eduardo Mendoza, a former Marine and former prosecutor.
Judge Mendoza has served since 2011 as a state circuit judge in Palatka, having originally been nominated by Florida Governor Richard Scott to the circuit court bench.
President Obama also nominated an openly Gay African-American judge, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Darrin P. Gayles; Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Beth Bloom; and Orlando lawyer Paul G. Byron, a plaintiff's toxic tort and products liability attorney and a former prosecutor.
Judge Gayles, when confirmed, will be the first-ever openly gay male African American federal judge.
Florida U.S. Senator Mario Rubio had previously blocked another openly Gay African-American judge from Miami-Dade County (supposedly because of some of his rulings in criminal cases). Today Senator Rubio announced that he supports the nomination of the four judicial nominees.
The only potential roadblock in sight is non-lawyer U.S. Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), a homophobe and ranking Repuyblican member of the Senate Judiciary Commttee. It was Senator Grassley who delayed confirmation of Judge Brian Davis for some 660 days in retaliatino for Judge Davis' remarks to NAACP (about Judge Clarence Thomas, former Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders, and the prevalence of institutional racism in America).
Judge Davis was confirmed last year and is an African-American formr prosecutor.
Senator Grassley is no longer able to blockade judicial nominations to federal trial and appellate benches since the United States Senate amended Rule XXII, the cloture (filibuster) rule last year as a result of his obstructionism.
Once confirmed, federal judges have lifetime tenure subject to good behavior under Article III of the U.S. Constitution. They have jurisdiction over federal civil and criminal cases and "diversity" cases involving citizens of different states.
Everything from civil rights to antitrust to environmental law to products liability to violations of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act are heard in federal courts.
The Florida advisory commitee for federal judicial nominations includes a diverse group of 65 lawyers, judges and law profesors. There are two former American Bar Association Presidents including Stephen Zack (of David Boies' Boies Schiller & Flexner firm, the first Hispanic ABA President and the younest Florida Bar President, now an alternate UN delegate) and Martha Barnett of Holland & Knight, who was also the first woman Chair of the ABA House of Delegates.
There are a total of five (5) Holland and Knight lawyers, two (2) lawyers from GrayRobinson and several law professors, including former University of Florida Law School Dean John Mills, an expert on constitutional law and privacy Florida International University Law School Dean R. Alexander Acosta, one of three former U.S. Attorneys.
There are few laymen (one of them is St. Augustine resident Carol Saviak, a lobbyist for the St. Johns County Chamber of Commerce).
Other members include: former Jacksonville State's Attorney Harry Shorstein; Edward Waters College President and former Jacksonville Sheriff Nat Glover, the first African-American elected a Florida Sheriff since Reconstruction; and Joseph W. Hatchett, former Eleventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals (Florida, Georgia and Alabama) (now head of Akerman Senterfitt's appellate practice), who was appointed by Governor Reuben Askew in 1975 and was in 1976 the first African-American elected statewide to lead a southern state court since Reconstructon.
Other panel members are former elected Florida Secretary of State Bruce Smathers, a member of the federal St. Augustine 450th Commemoration Commission and son of former Senator George Smathers (JFK's best friend in the U.S. Senate and the only non-family member to attend JFK's wedding)
Also on the panel are former Miami U.S. Attorney Dexter Lehtinen (spouse of Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen) and former Miami U.S. Attorney Kendall Coffey (Southern District conference chair), and our Middle District Conference Chair Wayne Hogan, who is a St. Augustine native, former Democratic Congressional candidate and prominent tobacco liability plaintiff's attorney for the State of Florida and the co-author of two successful state constitutional amendments on fair districting (Amendments 4 & 5).