First Caribbean American Judge Appointed to Florida Supreme Court

Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Tuesday his choice of two Caribbean Americans to fill the two vacancies on the Florida Supreme Court: Judge Renatha Francis (Jamaican) and John Couriel, Esq. (Cuban).

Francis, 42, has served as a judge for the 15th Judicial Circuit Court since 2017 and the last six months in the family and probate division in Palm Beach County. She is the first Caribbean-American appointed to serve on Florida’s highest court.

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Florida Supreme Court’s First Caribbean American Judge

She was born in Jamaica to a single mother from a farming background and helped raise her younger sister. Before immigrating to the U.S., she operated a bar and trucking company in Jamaica.

Francis graduated from the University of the West Indies in 2000 and from Florida Coastal Law School in 2010. She worked as a staff attorney for an appeals court before being appointed to the bench three years ago.

She is not only making history as the first Caribbean-American judge to be appointed to Florida’s highest court, but as a mother of two, who has been appointed while on maternity leave. Her youngest son is only one month-old son.

John Couriel, 41, an attorney with Miami firm Kobre & Kim, specializes in civil litigation involving Latin America. He served three years as the vice chair of the American Bar Association’s International Criminal Law committee and was an Assistant US Attorney from 2009 to 2012 in South Florida.

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Living The Cuban American Dream

Couriel is the son of Cuban immigrants, whose parents arrived separately to the U.S. in 1961. His father was among 14,000 children air lifted into South Florida during Operation Pedro Pan.

He graduated Harvard College in 2000 and Harvard Law School in 2003.

“I am grateful to my parents, who made the most of the opportunities available only here, only to Americans. For my father and for his parents, that meant sacrifices I, now a father myself, find inconceivable,” he said Tuesday via TampaBay.com. “My mother, too, came from Cuba. Her parents took whatever work they could find, did it well, and without complaint so that she and her siblings would know what is possible in this country. Today, they do.”

Francis, the first Caribbean-American to serve on Florida’s Supreme Court, won’t be able to take her seat on the bench until September.