The President announced that Alex Acosta, currently Dean of the Florida International School of Law will be the next nominee for Secretary of Labor following the withdrawal of Andrew Puzder. Acosta is a native of Miami, Florida. He received his bachelor's degree in economics from Harvard College and his law degree from Harvard Law School.
Following law school, Acosta served as a law clerk to Samuel Alito, then a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, from 1994 to 1995. Acosta then worked at the Washington, D.C. office of the law firm Kirkland & Ellis, where he specialized in employment and labor issues. While in Washington, Acosta taught classes on employment law, disability-based discrimination law, and civil rights law at the George Mason University School of Law.
Acosta served as a member of the National Labor Relations Board, where he participated in or authored more than 125 opinions. Following the NLRB, he was Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice; becoming the first Hispanic to hold the rank of Assistant Attorney General. More recently, Acosta served as the U.S. Attorney for Southern District of Florida, and was the longest serving U.S. Attorney in the District since the 1970s. In that position, Acosta prosecuted Jack Abramof, Jose Padilla and several public corruption cases.
On December 31, 2013 Acosta became the new chairman of U.S. Century Bank, the largest domestically-owned Hispanic community bank in Florida and one of the fifteen largest Hispanic community banks in the nation.
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