Cary Gaylord filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday challenging the rules for appointing members to Florida’s Statewide Judicial Nominating Commission for Judges of Compensation Claims. The Tampa eminent domain attorney says a statutory requirement reserving seats for members of minority groups and women prevented him from being considered for two commission openings. The 18-member panel reviews candidates and recommends nominees for the state’s 33 workers’ compensation judges.
Gaylord, a founding partner at the Tampa firm Gaylord Merlin Ludovici & Diaz, filed the case in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida in Tallahassee, as reported by the Tampa Free Press. The complaint names Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida Bar President Michael Fox Orr and commission Chair Jefferson Knight in their official capacities. Gaylord seeks a declaration that the requirements are unconstitutional, an injunction against their enforcement, one dollar in nominal damages and legal fees.
At issue is Florida Statute 440.45, which splits the commission's 18 seats evenly among three appointing bodies — six chosen by the governor, six by the Florida Bar, and six by sitting commission members. Under the law, each of those three appointing bodies must ensure at least one of its six picks is a member of a minority group, which Florida law defines to include Black, Hispanic, Asian, and Native American people, as well as American women. The Florida Bar's direct role in filling six of the seats explains why its president was named alongside the governor, as the Tampa Free Press noted.
How the commission works
The commission evaluates candidates and recommends nominees for workers’ compensation judge vacancies. Florida’s 2026 statute also makes attorneys who appear before a judge of compensation claims more than four times a year ineligible to serve, and provides that the commission’s meetings and determinations are open to the public, according to the Florida Legislature.
A Career Spent on the Other Side of the Table
Gaylord is no stranger to the commission he is now suing over. He served on the Judicial Nominating Commission for the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit from 2000 to 2010, chairing it for three years, and he graduated from West Point in 1969. He has spent more than four decades specializing in eminent domain and property rights law across more than 30 Florida counties, work that earned him Best Lawyers in America's 2023 Lawyer of the Year honor for Eminent Domain and Condemnation Law in Tampa and a spot in the Florida Trend Legal Elite Hall of Fame.
According to the complaint, Gaylord applied on October 1 for a vacant seat appointed by the governor to represent Florida’s Second District Court of Appeal and for another seat expected to be appointed by the commission. Gaylord is male and does not belong to a group covered by the statute. He alleges the governor’s current appointees do not satisfy the statutory requirement, leaving him ineligible for consideration for the governor-appointed opening.
Echoes of a Federal Ruling in Iowa
Gaylord is represented by attorneys from Pacific Legal Foundation, which also brought a challenge to a gender-balance requirement for an Iowa judicial nominating commission. The case, Hurley v. Gast, was decided by a federal district court in January 2024, according to the foundation’s case summary.
What the Iowa case decided
Pacific Legal Foundation’s summary says the Iowa district court ruled in January 2024 that the state’s sex-based gender-balance rule violated the Equal Protection Clause. That case concerned Iowa’s commission and its gender-balance requirement; it was a separate challenge from Gaylord’s lawsuit over Florida’s commission rules.
Caitlyn Fellner, an attorney with the foundation, said government decisions based on race or sex constitute unconstitutional discrimination. Fellner said public service should be open to qualified people on equal terms and that Gaylord should be able to pursue service on the commission without facing demographic barriers.
The complaint argues that the requirements reserve seats based on race or sex and deny some applicants an equal opportunity to serve, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. It also says the rules limit Floridians’ opportunities to take part in selecting judges who hear workers’ compensation claims. The cited FindLaw material concerns administrative law judges generally and does not substantiate that complaint allegation.
No Findings of Past Discrimination, Complaint Says
Gaylord's legal team leans heavily on the U.S. Supreme Court's 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions, which held that race-conscious government policies are unconstitutional unless they are tied to remediating specific, proven past discrimination. Pacific Legal Foundation has built a broader legal strategy around that precedent, and its research has identified statutory race or sex representation mandates for public boards and commissions in 25 states, feeding a wave of federal lawsuits against similar quotas, per Pacific Legal Foundation.
The complaint points to the legislative record behind Florida's rule, noting that 1993 legislative-session records show lawmakers held no formal discussions or findings regarding past discrimination on the panel when the requirement was created. Those same records, according to the complaint, show lawmakers did not explore race-neutral alternatives or set any expiration date for the rule. The statute sits within a broader framework established by Florida Statute 760.80, enacted in 1994, which set a state policy promoting balance between minority and non-minority members across the state's decision-making boards, commissions, and councils, according to the Florida Legislature.
Lawmakers Already Moving to Repeal the Rule
Florida legislators have separately taken up the question of whether to scrap these mandates altogether. During the 2025 and 2026 legislative sessions, state lawmakers introduced bills including SB 1662 and HB 1189 that would remove minority and gender representation mandates from state statutes, specifically targeting Florida Statute 440.45, according to the Florida Senate. That legislative push mirrors what has already happened elsewhere: Tennessee and Arkansas both repealed racial and gender appointment quotas for public boards in 2024 and 2025 after facing federal civil rights lawsuits from conservative legal groups.
The dynamic puts DeSantis in an unusual position. His administration has been an outspoken opponent of diversity, equity, and inclusion policies in public education and state agencies, yet he is now named as a defendant for enforcing a statutory quota embedded in Florida law more than three decades ago. Gaylord's lawsuit seeks a federal court declaration that the statutory requirements are unconstitutional, along with a permanent injunction blocking state officials from enforcing race and sex quotas during future commission appointments.
