Supreme Court hopeful boasts weighty record

Barbara Lagoa, a frontrunner for the open U.S. Supreme Court seat, has accumulated a substantial record during her legal career in Florida, providing a glimpse into her views on business disputes, executive power and other contentious issues.

The Miami-born judge played a role in decisions limiting felon voting rights, ousting former Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel from office and blocking Miami Beach’s efforts to raise the city’s minimum wage.

Working as a pro bono lawyer, she served on the legal team representing the Miami relatives of Elián González, who was at the center of an international child custody case that dominated headlines two decades ago.

Her public statements show that she values a strict analysis of the law’s original intent over a legal philosophy that calls for empathy in arriving at a just decision. She’s sided with businesses over claims brought by employees and consumers. She’s upheld Gov. Ron DeSantis’ political priorities on voting and executive suspensions.

Lagoa, 52, was appointed by former Gov. Jeb Bush to the state’s Third District Court of Appeal in Miami in 2006. DeSantis elevated her to the Florida Supreme Court in January 2019.

She served about a year on the state Supreme Court

before President Trump nominated her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, which has jurisdiction over federal cases originating in the states of Alabama, Florida and Georgia.

Here are some notable rulings and legal stances Lagoa has taken through the years.

Felon voting rights

As a federal appeals judge, Lagoa sided with the majority this month in upholding a state law that requires Floridians with felony convictions to pay off all their fines and fees before they can vote in elections.

More than a dozen people with felony convictions challenged the law, arguing that it amounted to an unconstitutional poll tax.

Lagoa rejected that argument in her concurring opinion.

“Florida’ s felon re enfranchisement scheme is constitutional,” she wrote. “It falls to the citizens of the State of Florida and their elected state legislators, not to federal judges, to make any additional changes to it.”

She ignored calls that she recuse herself because she had participated in crafting an advisory opinion on the issue while serving on the state Supreme Court.

Parkland school shooting

Lagoa authored the Florida Supreme Court’s majority opinion upholding Gov. Ron DeSantis’ suspension of former Broward Sheriff Scott Israel from office.

Lagoa wrote that DeSantis acted within his constitutional powers in suspending the sheriff on the grounds of “neglect of duty” and “incompetence” in the wake of the Feb. 14, 2018, shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that killed 17 students and staff.

In the opinion, Lagoa stressed the judiciary has a “limited role in reviewing the exercise of the suspension power.”

Minimum wage, foreclosures and Uber

Lagoa sided with business in two cases that she considered shortly after being named to the Florida Supreme Court.

With Lagoa’s support, the Supreme Court declined to take up a lower court’s ruling striking down a Miami Beach ordinance that would have raised the city’s minimum wage to more than $13 per hour.

Lagoa also was part of a Supreme Court flip-flop on a foreclosure case that made it harder for homeowners to collect legal fees in disputes with the mortgage industry. With Lagoa’s support, the court reversed a previous decision favoring homeowners on the grounds that it didn’t have jurisdiction over the case.

In 2017, as a state appeals judge, Lagoa joined in ruling that Uber drivers are not entitled to unemployment benefits because they are independent contractors and not employees.

Elián González

Lagoa was part of a team of lawyers who did pro bono legal work to prevent the return of Elián González to Cuba in 2000.

The five-year-old boy was found clinging to an inner tube three miles off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, setting off an international custody dispute that pitted the boy’s Miami relatives and the Cuban exile community against the boy’s father and the regime of Fidel Castro in Cuba.

González was eventually returned to his father’s custody and taken to Cuba.

Abortion

Lagoa’s record doesn’t include significant abortion cases.

In response to questions from the U.S. Senate, Lagoa wrote that she would honor the precedent set by Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that established a nationwide right to abortion.

“For lower court judges, all Supreme Court precedent, including Roe v. Wade … is settled law,” she wrote. “If confirmed, I would faithfully apply this precedent and all other precedents of the Supreme

Court.”

Lagoa, a Catholic, garnered significant praise from the anti-abortion group Florida Family Policy Council when she was named to the Florida Supreme Court.

“She is smart, thoughtful, and has a conservative judicial philosophy that appreciates the limited role of the court,” John Stemberger, the group’s president, said at the time. “She is also deeply committed to her faith, her family and her community. In the world of judicial appointments, Barbara Lagoa is a home run.”

On the campaign trail, Trump has vowed to only nominate judges who would “automatically” overturn Roe v. Wade.

Bipartisan confirmation

The U.S. Senate examined Lagoa’s record when she was appointed as a federal judge, voting 80-15 to confirm her nomination.

That vote showed Lagoa has the credentials and the reputation to serve on the nation’s highest court, said Jesse Panuccio, former acting associate attorney general in President Donald Trump’s Justice Department and a Lagoa supporter.

“The role of a judge is to rule consistent with the law, and Judge Lagoa has a long track record of doing just that,” he said.

Panuccio estimated Lagoa has been involved in about 12,000 cases and has written more than 400 opinions.

But with the makeup of the Supreme Court at stake, Democrats are devoting new scrutiny to her record.

U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz took aim at Lagoa’s stance on felon voting rights, which could block as many as 85,000 Floridians with prior convictions from voting.

“She doesn’t appear to have any regard for the will of the people,” Wasserman Schultz said Monday. “I wouldn’t expect her to have much integrity in making decisions if she were to be appointed to the Supreme Court.”

Empathy in the courtroom

Former President

Barack Obama remarked during his administration one of his criteria for picking a Supreme Court justice is empathy with “people’s hopes and struggles.”

In her written answers to the Senate, Lagoa disagreed that empathy should play a role in a judge’s decisions in the courtroom

“A judge’s decision must be governed by the law and the facts and cannot be affected by sympathy for one party or another,” she wrote. “That obligation is embodied in the judge’s oath to ‘administer justice without respect to persons.’ … Empathy does not supersede a judge’s obligation to follow the law.”

Judicial philosophy

Lagoa has been a member of the conservative Federalist Society since 1998.

She declined to answer questions from senators on several controversial and hypothetical issues, citing judicial rules barring judges from publicly commenting on matters that could come before the court.

Logoa was asked if she thinks voter fraud is a widespread problem, how the courts should handle a president who refuses to comply with a judicial order and whether a president has the ability to pardon himself.

She wrote that she agrees with the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling that integrated schools, writing it “holds a unique place in American jurisprudence as it corrected a grave racial injustice.”

She agreed that racial bias exists in the criminal justice system.

She summed up her philosophy this way in a speech she made when she was appointed to the state Supreme Court.

“I am particularly mindful of the fact that under our constitutional system, it is for the Legislature, and not the courts, to make the law,” she said. “It is the role of judges to apply, not to alter, the work of the people’s representatives. And it is the role of judges to interpret our constitution and statutes as they are written.”