In a 2014 court case, Jorge Labarga found that he had a lot in common with the applicant, Jose Godinez-Samperio — a former Eagle Scout, high school valedictorian, and law school graduate who had passed the Florida bar in 2011. But Godinez-Samperio could not practice law in the state because he was undocumented.
“He and I were brought to this great nation as young children by our hardworking immigrant parents,” Labarga wrote. “Both of us were driven by the opportunities this great nation offered to realize the American dream.”
Labarga reluctantly joined the court’s unanimous ruling that the applicant could not get his lawyer’s license in Florida because of his immigration status, but he wrote a separate opinion encouraging the Florida Legislature to amend state law to “remedy the inequities” of such situations — as California had already done. After Florida legislators subsequently amended the law to allow undocumented immigrants to practice law in the state, Godinez-Samperio was sworn into the Florida Bar on November 20, 2014.
Labarga came to the United States from Cuba with his family when he was 11. He has been a justice on the Florida Supreme Court since 2009 and was the first Cuban American to become chief justice. Previously, he served on an appeals court and a circuit court, and he also worked as an assistant public defender and in a law firm. As a circuit judge, he presided over the famous Bush v. Gore election case, declining to allow a recount. Today, he is often the lone dissent in the Supreme Court’s rulings.
“As long as I’m a judge, I am going to do what I think is right, what the law says is right,” he said. “People may disagree with me on that. That’s fine. Reasonable people can disagree about complicated things. But don’t disagree with me about my devotion to integrity in interpreting the law.”
