Alex Acosta, Former Kirkland Lawyer, Is New Labor Nominee: Five Facts

[caption id="attachment_42881" align="alignright” width="229"][Image “Alexander Acosta, in 2008, when he was United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida. Photographer: Emily Harris/ Bloomberg News” (src=https://bol.bna.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/m432261.jpeg)]Alexander Acosta, in 2008, when he was United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida. Photographer: Emily Harris/ Bloomberg News[/caption]

On Thursday, President Donald Trump nominated a conservative alumnus of the law firm Kirkland & Ellis to be his Secretary of Labor: R. Alexander Acosta, dean of Florida International University College of Law.

Acosta, who worked at Kirkland as an associate in the 1990s, was named a day after Andrew F. Puzder withdrew consideration for the position because Republican senators didn’t support him.

Kirkland, with around 1,600 lawyers and $2.3 billion in revenue as of 2015, according to The American Lawyer, is also the former firm of Kenneth Starr, and last year acquired Bancroft PLLC, the law firm led by Paul Clement who defended the Defense of Marriage Act, which banned gay marriage.

If confirmed, Acosta, a Cuban-American, would be the first latino member of Trump’s cabinet. He currently serves as chair of the ABA’s Commission on Hispanic Legal Rights and Responsibilities.

For readers curious about Acosta’s legal background, we’ve laid out five key facts about his track record below.

1) Acosta, a Republican, began his current job in 2009 after serving for three years as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida. As a federal prosecutor, he oversaw the high-profile prosecutions of former lobbyist Jack Abramoff for fraud, of Charles “Chuckie” Taylor Jr. (the son of former Liberian president Charles Taylor) for torture, and Cali Cartel founders Miguel and Gilberto Rodriquez-Orejuela for cocaine smuggling.

2) The Miami native earned both his undergraduate and law school degrees from Harvard. As an undergraduate, he was editor of the conservative campus newspaper the Harvard Salient from 1989-1990.

3) After law school, he clerked for Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. (then on the Third Circuit) before joining Kirkland & Ellis, where he specialized in labor and employment.

4) He was a member of the National Labor Relations Board from 2002-2003, during which time he participated in or authored more than 125 opinions, according to his biography on the LIU website.

5) Following his time on the NLRB, he was appointed by President George Bush as assistant attorney general for the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights division, becoming the first latino assistant attorney general. He was later criticized by members of the black community for failing to a rogue section chief during his tenure, according to the New York Law Journal .

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