Meet the Cuban who could become a Supreme Court justice

President Barack Obama has yet to announce his nominee

MIAMI –  President Barack Obama could be considering a Cuban Catholic father of two to fill Justice Antonin Scalia's seat. 

Adalberto Jose Jordan, 54, left the communist island when he was 6 and enrolled to Santa Clara Elementary School in Miami-Dade County's Allapattah. He met the now Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski when he was an altar boy at the Corpus Christi Church in Miami.

Jordan played baseball at Archbishop Curley High School and later at St. Brendan High School, where he graduated from in 1980. While he worked at  Sun Bank, he attended the University of Miami School of Law. And he married his high school sweet heart, Esther Jordan, whom he met as a little boy.

They have two daughters, Diana and Elizabeth. He coached their soccer team at St. Brendan and she teaches there. 

Jordan received straight As in law school and with the help of his professors applied to the Supreme Court for clerkships. After he graduated from law school, he clerked for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor from 1988 to 1989.

President Bill Clinton appointed him to the Federal District Court in 1999. He became the first Cuban-born judge to be appointed to the federal court of appeals when Obama promoted him in 2012. 

In 2014, Jordan rejected a request by Florida’s secretaries of health and management services and a county clerk to extend a hold on same-sex marriages.

In 2015, Jordan ruled that Florida’s healthcare system for poor and disabled children was violating federal laws and accused lawmakers of setting the state’s Medicaid budget artificially low.

According to the New York Times, Paul J. Watford, 48, Srikanth Srinivasa, 48, Jane L. Kelly, 51, Kamala D. Harris, 51, and Merrick B. Garland, 63, were also possible contenders. 

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Sen. Patrick Leahy recently met with Obama to discuss choosing the nominee. Senate. Majority Leader Mitch McConnel said Republicans "don't intend to take up a nominee or to have hearings." And he added during a press conference, that Republicans were looking "forward to the American people deciding who they want to make this appointment through their own vote."