Letter to the editor: A Supreme Court Justice from Miami? Yes!

Re: the Feb. 10 Herald online story,“Ketanji Brown Jackson’s background is unusual for a Supreme Court nominee. It involves Miami.” There’s a friendly competition taking place between South Carolina and Florida, more specifically Columbia and Miami, as I and Congressman James Clyburn, Democratic Whip, have announced our support of the potential Supreme Court Justice nominees from our respective states.While both women — J. Michelle Childs of South Carolina and Brown Jackson of Florida — hold commendable qualifications that would benefit the highest court in the land, I fully support Brown Jackson.I have been a friend of Brown Jackson’s family for decades and, when serving on the Miami-Dade County School Board, I advocated for the hiring of her father, Johnny Brown, as the first Black attorney for the MDCPS Board.

Brown Jackson is a Miami Palmetto Senior High School graduate and a two-time Harvard graduate. If selected to the court, she would join the history-making ranks, as U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy is a fellow Miami Palmetto grad.

She was appointed by President Obama to serve as vice-chair of the U.S. Sentencing Commission and has experience as a public defender.She can garner bipartisan support, including that of Justice Stephen Breyer and former U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan, having been confirmed to the U.S. Court of Appeals.

She has received support from hundreds in the Miami judiciary community, who reached out to me to champion her potential as a SCOTUS nominee.

The Supreme Court is void of any representation from the South, and it would benefit from having Miami’s very own Ketanji Brown Jackson as a justice.

Frederica Wilson

U.S. House of Representatives