Hon. Darrin Gayles

Darrin Phillip Gayles (born December 16, 1966) is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida and former Florida Circuit Court judge.

Education and Career

Gayles received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1990 from Howard University. He received a Juris Doctor in 1993 from the George Washington University Law School.

He began his career as an assistant state attorney in the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office from 1993 to 1997. From 1997 to 1999, he served as an assistant district counsel at the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service. From 1999 to 2004, he served as an assistant United States attorney for the Southern District of Florida. In 2004, Gayles became a judge, serving as a county judge in Miami-Dade County within the Eleventh Judicial Circuit. From 2011 to 2014, he served as a circuit court judge on the Eleventh Judicial Circuit Court of Florida.

Federal judicial Service

On February 6, 2014, President Barack Obama nominated Gayles to serve as a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, to the seat vacated by Judge Patricia A. Seitz. He received his judicial commission on June 19, 2014. He is the first openly gay African-American federal judge.

Notable Cases

• Sitting with the 11th circuit in July 2020, Gayles dissented when the court upheld an Alabama voter ID law without a trial even though evidence showed that voters of color were twice as likely to lack ID as white voters. Gayles wrote “The majority opinion essentially argues that we should not penalize Alabama’s legislators for Alabama’s past; rather, we should start with a clean slate when reviewing the Photo ID Law. But this is not what the law commands us to do. Alabama’s history of voter suppression is relevant here and provides a wealth of direct and circumstantial evidence that should be considered at trial.”