Florida’s GOP senators hold up Biden’s nomination of top lawyer for federal judge

Detra Shaw-Wilder seemed like a shoo-in when President Joe Biden nominated the prominent attorney as a federal judge in Miami.

As the former managing partner of a top South Florida law firm, she came highly recommended by a nominating committee handpicked by the influential Miami Sen. Marco Rubio. She also drew broad support from members of the conservative Federalist Society, the Cuban American Bar Association, the American Bar Association, and business and civic leaders across the political spectrum.

Yet despite such widespread backing and the White House’s behind-the-scenes lobbying, Shaw-Wilder’s nomination has run aground in the murky waters of judicial politics. Florida’s two Republican senators — Rubio, in an about-face, and Rick Scott — have held up her nomination as a presidential election looms between Biden, the Democrat, and former president Donald Trump, the putative GOP nominee.

Three South Florida nominees get Senate backing

The blocking of her nomination has upset Shaw-Wilder’s backers, some of whom question how three other federal judicial nominees from South Florida sailed through the Senate earlier this year, including a Hispanic woman, a non-Hispanic woman and the nephew of auto magnate Norman Braman, a multimillion-dollar donor to Rubio’s presidential bid in 2016.

Miami Democratic Congresswoman Frederica Wilson, who has championed Shaw-Wilder’s nomination, said she feels “personally responsible for the appointment of Detra Shaw-Wilder to the bench.”

Wilson pointed out that the late U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke, who died last year after serving in Miami as the first African-American woman appointed to the federal bench in Florida, asked the congresswoman to promise that she “will make sure that a Black woman replaces me.”

“I made a promise to the late Judge Marcia Cooke and I plan on upholding that promise,” Wilson said in a statement. “Recent developments dictate that I need to have another conversation with Senator Scott and find out exactly what we can do to mitigate any opposition.”

READ MORE: A prominent Black lawyer in Coral Gables nominated as federal judge in South Florida

Scott: White House didn’t consult him properly

In an interview, Scott says he’s blocking Shaw-Wilder’s nomination in the U.S. Senate because he believes the Biden administration did not properly consult with him before formally announcing her appointment in late March. Rubio now says he’s putting her nomination on hold, too.

Scott, who interviewed Shaw-Wilder last year and still considers her a viable candidate for a federal judgeship, told the Miami Herald that White House staffers did not act in “good faith” by discussing potential nominees with him and reaching an agreement before Biden announced his selection of her in March.

“There’s supposed to be good-faith consultation between the Senate office of the home-state senator and the White House,” Scott said Wednesday in an interview with the Herald. “So, they haven’t worked with us. And so until they work with us, I’m not moving forward. ... There’s a process, they just said, ‘Heck with the process,’ [and] didn’t go through it.”

Asked if the upcoming rematch between Biden and Trump played a factor in his decision, Scott said he’s not putting Shaw-Wilder’s nomination on hold to spite the Democratic president.

Nevertheless, legal observers say this trend has been playing out in certain states such as Missouri, Mississippi and now possibly Florida, where Republicans dominate the political landscape. So far, the Biden administration has seen about 200 judicial appointments confirmed by the Senate, which is comparable at this stage to Trump’s total when he was president.

Rubio’s change of heart

Despite his initial support for Shaw-Wilder, Rubio’s office says the senator is not moving forward with her nomination, echoing Scott’s position.

“As Senator Rubio has said before, the White House needs to work collaboratively with both senators if it wants the process to move forward,” a spokesman said in a statement provided to the Herald on Wednesday. Asked to elaborate, the spokesman did not respond.

As U.S. senators, Rubio and Scott have the power to block a president’s nomination of any federal judge in the Southern District of Florida and elsewhere in the state, preventing a review by the Senate Judiciary Committee and full Senate. Under Senate rules, each has the power to veto a nomination by refusing to issue a so-called blue slip to start the confirmation process.

In this instance, both have refused to do so, which is holding up Shaw-Wilder’s nomination as she goes through the final stage of a government background check.

White House says Rubio, Scott were informed

A senior Biden administration official disagreed with the Florida senators’ claims that the White House has not consulted with them on the Shaw-Wilder nomination. The official said Scott and Rubio were informed that Biden intended to move forward with Shaw-Wilder as the president’s choice for the federal judge opening in Miami in the weeks before her nomination was officially announced in late March.

Moreover, the official said, her name was part of discussions on potential nominees with both senators as far back as July 2022, and that she remained among the leading candidates from January 2023 until her nomination was announced. Scott interviewed Shaw-Wilder in January 2023, after the senator’s general counsel had interviewed her in August 2021, according to her Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire.

“The White House stands fully behind Detra Shaw-Wilder’s nomination for the Southern District of Florida,” said Phil Brest, special assistant to the president and senior counsel, calling her a “consensus pick.”

“Ms. Shaw-Wilder is an accomplished attorney who has the experience, qualifications, and skill set to be a tremendous asset to the people of the Southern District [of Florida],” Brest said. “The vast majority of the Southern District’s docket is made up of civil cases, including the type of complex civil cases that Ms. Shaw-Wilder has handled in her decades of litigation experience.”

Shaw-Wilder’s supporters are staying focused on moving her nomination forward rather than openly questioning the motives of Florida’s two Republican senators.

Harley Tropin, co-founder of the Coral Gables-based law firm Kozyak Tropin & Throckmorton that hired Shaw-Wilder 30 years ago, said her strong background in complex civil litigation and her history as a Miami native who rose to the top of the legal community would bring tremendous value to the federal court.

“From working with Detra Shaw-Wilder for decades, I know that she is superbly qualified for this position — by temperament, intellect and integrity,” Tropin told the Herald on Thursday. “She will be a wonderful federal judge and I pray the senators see it that way and help her get confirmed.”

During his interview with the Herald, Scott suggested that he might be willing to find a “way forward” with Shaw-Wilder’s nomination if the White House considers her and other candidates — not only for the vacancy in Miami but for other openings on the federal bench in the Middle District of Florida. That district includes the Tampa, Orlando and Jacksonville regions.

“The way forward is I propose nominees, they propose nominees, we talk through our nominees, and we come to an agreement,” said Scott, without saying whether he would agree to let Shaw-Wilder’s nomination go forward in Miami if he could pick one candidate for three current federal judge openings in the Middle District of Florida.

According to people familiar with Shaw-Wilder’s nomination, the White House has indicated to the senators that it is open to a negotiated package of federal judicial nominees that would include her for the opening in Miami and a candidate for the Middle District of Florida.

Miami native

Shaw-Wilder has Miami and Florida in her blood.

She was born at Jackson Memorial Hospital, grew up in Miami Gardens and graduated from Hialeah-Miami Lakes Senior High. She received her law degree from the University of Miami School of Law and her bachelor’s degree from the University of Florida, before joining the Kozyak Tropin & Throckmorton law firm in Coral Gables in 1994.

She became a partner in 2002 and later served as managing partner of the firm. She is currently its general counsel. The high-profile law firm was involved in securing a $1 billion settlement for the families of victims killed in the Surfside condo building collapse in June 2021.

Shaw-Wilder, 54, who lives with her family in Davie, had been on a short list of candidates recommended by a nominating committee picked by Rubio, the Miami Republican. However, she was overlooked during the previous round of Biden nominations for federal judgeships in South Florida — to the disappointment of local Black leaders.

In late February, the U.S. Senate confirmed three candidates — all former U.S. prosecutors — as federal judges in the Southern District of Florida. One was Jacqueline Becerra, who grew up in Hialeah, and is a graduate of the University of Miami and Yale University Law School. She was a magistrate judge in Miami and previously worked as a prosecutor in the U.S. attorney’s office and as a partner with the Greenberg Traurig law firm.

The Senate also confirmed David Leibowitz, who obtained his bachelor’s and law degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and then served in the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan before working as general counsel for his uncle’s auto empire, Braman Motors, based in Miami. His uncle was Rubio’s biggest benefactor when he ran for president in 2016.

READ MORE: Senate confirms Hialeah native and Braman’s nephew as federal judges in Miami

Melissa Damian, who worked in the U.S. attorney’s office before serving as a U.S. magistrate judge in Miami, was also confirmed after them. Damian, a graduate of Princeton University and UM law school, clerked early in her career for former U.S. District Judge Ursula Ungaro, who championed her bid for the federal bench.

Also in late February, the Senate confirmed a Black magistrate judge, Julie Sneed, as a federal judge in the Middle District of Florida.

Scott, a former Florida governor who faces reelection to the Senate in November, said the White House was more collaborative on the nominations of these four federal judges and two U.S. attorneys in recent years than on Shaw-Wilder’s recent appointment.

Although no one has accused the two Florida senators of racial discrimination in holding up Shaw-Wilder’s nomination for federal judge, that highly sensitive view is simmering in the minds of several legal and political observers in South Florida, according to interviews with the Herald.

It also is dredging up bitter memories dating back a decade when Rubio blocked the Obama administration’s nomination of Miami-Dade Circuit Judge William Thomas, an openly gay Black man, for the federal bench.

“We are disappointed that the nomination appears to have been stalled for inexplicable political reasons,” the Judicial Diversity Initiative, a coalition of Black Bar Associations in South Florida, said in a statement issued on Thursday. “Many people in the community will be disappointed with such an outcome, including Florida’s Black community.”

The group stressed that Shaw-Wilder was “eminently qualified” to serve on the federal bench, noting that “business owners, entrepreneurs, community leaders, and lawyers on the right side of the spectrum and the left have written in support of her nomination.”

Strong support for her

Among them: a retired Miami-Dade Circuit Court judge, a member of the Federalist Society and a former publisher of the Herald who founded a nonprofit to help young children before entering school.

“Ms. Shaw-Wilder is well known and respected in our legal community for her keen legal intellect, calm demeanor and tireless efforts to make our profession more accessible and civil,” former Circuit Judge Alan Fine wrote to Sens. Rubio, Scott, Lindsay Graham and Richard Durbin in April. “I endorse her nomination without any hesitation or concern. She will be a fantastic judge if confirmed.”

“As a business lawyer within the financial services industry, I have worked with Detra and can confidently attest to her exceptional qualities that make her suited for the bench,” Erica Bartimmo, a member of the Federalist Society in South Florida, wrote to Scott.

“One of Detra’s most admirable qualities is her dedication to fairness and justice,” Bartimmo wrote, copying the White House on her letter. “She is not swayed by personal biases or political agendas but instead approaches each case with an unwavering commitment to the principles of justice and equity.”

“Detra Shaw-Wilder is simply among the finest people I have known anywhere and at any time,” former Herald publisher Dave Lawrence wrote to Scott, describing her as “a paragon of professionalism.”

Reached by phone, Lawrence said Shaw-Wilder is “a person who ought to be embraced by everyone ... a significant human being who believes in this country’s values.

“She ought to be confirmed quickly so she can start work,” he said. “She’s always impressed me as a person of genuine decency that I trust fully about making decisions about the lives of other human beings.”