R. Fred Lewis, a coal miner's son from West Virginia who rose to serve on the Florida Supreme Court and spent two decades pressing the judiciary to open its doors wider for people with disabilities, died Tuesday, May 26, at age 78. His family said he sustained a severe fall last week that broke his spine, an injury from which he could not recover.
Lewis served on the court from 1998 to 2019, including a stint as chief justice from 2006 to 2008. Then-Gov. Lawton Chiles appointed him, a move that was, by most accounts, virtually unheard of, since Lewis had never served as a judge before joining the state's highest bench.
His death closes a chapter in Florida's legal history that conservatives in the state spent years trying to turn. Lewis was one of the court's most outspoken liberal voices, and his retirement in January 2019, alongside Justices Barbara Pariente and Peggy Quince, gave Gov. Ron DeSantis the opportunity to reshape the court's ideological direction. Whatever one thinks of Lewis's judicial philosophy, and Florida conservatives had serious, well-founded disagreements with it, the man's personal story and devotion to his disabled daughter earned respect across the aisle.
Lewis grew up in Beckley, West Virginia, where much of his family worked the coal mines. He was the first in his family to earn a college degree, attending Florida Southern College in Lakeland on a combined athletic and academic scholarship. He played basketball and baseball and served as class president three years running.
He enrolled at the University of Miami's law school in 1969, again on scholarship, and graduated third in his class. He stayed in Miami to practice law, first defending insurance companies, then working as an appellate lawyer who represented both industry and individuals. He kept a jar of coal on his desk and a lithograph of a coal miner on his wall at his firm, Kuvin, Lewis, Restani and Stettin.
That background, blue-collar roots, no judicial pedigree, shaped the way Lewis approached the court. Dan Stengle, who served as Chiles' general counsel, submitted Lewis's name as one of five candidates for a vacant seat. Chiles wavered. Stengle said he finally told the governor what he believed was already obvious.
"I think you wanted to appoint Fred Lewis since you interviewed him. His authenticity. His humility. There was just a connection."
The appointment was one of Chiles' final acts before his death. Lewis had never worn a judge's robe.
Lindsay Lewis, the younger of Fred and Judy Lewis's two daughters, was born with a rare genetic disorder that left her deaf, nearly blind, and suffering from a constellation of other serious disabilities. She sat in a wheelchair beside her father at the press conference where Chiles introduced him to the state.
Chiles said at that event: "He understands the struggles, difficulties and challenges that many citizens face every day."
When Lewis applied for the open seat, he wrote words that friends and colleagues would cite for years afterward:
"I have learned to transform the suffocating stares and ridiculing comments due to my daughter's abnormal behavior into an understanding by others of her human condition."
He added: "Her human spirit has taught me more about life than I ever thought possible." Lindsay frequently accompanied him to Florida Bar gatherings and other events. He introduced her proudly when lawyers approached to shake his hand.
That personal experience drove Lewis to assemble a task force that surveyed courthouses across Florida, identifying structures and practices that blocked access for people with disabilities. He convened the state's first commission to address the treatment of people with mental illness inside the court system.
The health and absence of prominent government figures always raises questions about institutional continuity, and Lewis's long tenure on the court left a mark that outlasted his own service.
Steven Leifman, a Miami-Dade County judge for 30 years, said Lewis changed the trajectory of his career in 2007 by asking him to oversee a Supreme Court commission on the treatment of Floridians with mental illness in the courts.
"He was one of the first jurists who recognized that the criminal system had become the mental health and substance abuse system in America."
After three years of study, the commission released what Leifman described as a damning report. It led to changes in how people with psychiatric disorders are treated within the court system. "Many of those things became a model for the country," Leifman said.
Lewis also championed an exhibition of photographs taken by abused and neglected children in foster care. The kids had been given Polaroid cameras and encouraged to explore their feelings through art. Lewis arranged for the photos to be displayed in the Supreme Court rotunda in 2003 and flew some of the youths to the capital to see their work.
Lewis's tenure was not without controversy, and not all of it was the kind that earns admiration from the right. In 2004, the court unanimously struck down "Terri's Law," legislation that had enabled then-Gov. Jeb Bush to order the reinsertion of a feeding tube sustaining Terri Schiavo, a Pinellas County woman whom a trial court had determined was in a vegetative state. The case fractured Florida and drew national attention.
Retired Justice Barbara Pariente said the case greatly troubled Lewis "because of his love for his own daughter," whose disabilities had been devastating. "But in the end he joined with the unanimous court."
Lewis's dedication to expanding the court's reach into the lives of ordinary Floridians endeared him to many on the left. It also made him a target for conservatives who saw the court overstepping its constitutional role. In 2012, a political action committee funded by Charles and David Koch backed a campaign to remove Lewis and two other justices through a merit retention vote. The three survived, but they called the period a stressful challenge to judicial independence.
Pariente recalled the effort: "We went around the state talking about the importance of a fair and impartial judiciary, not beholden to special interests. We shared a belief in the importance of protecting individual rights."
Questions of legal accountability and institutional overreach have only grown more pressing since Lewis left the bench, as courts at every level face scrutiny over the boundaries of their authority.
When Lewis became chief justice in 2006, he hung a sign at the entrance to the court. It read, roughly: "Tell us how we can move the cause of justice forward through the issues in your case."
Retired Justice Harry Lee Anstead, who served alongside Lewis and competed with him on the tennis court for years, recalled the gesture vividly.
"Every lawyer present for oral arguments that day couldn't avoid reading that sign. It was an approach that extended to both the mundane, like an automobile accident, and to the possibility of the death penalty being imposed."
Anstead called Lewis remarkable "for his character and passion for justice" and offered a broader tribute to his friend's approach to leadership:
"Great leaders know only one way to lead, and that's by example. Without that, nobody would have the credibility to preach about high standards and justice."
The ongoing battles over judicial philosophy at both the state and federal level make Lewis's legacy a contested one, a fact he would have understood well.
Lewis retired from the court in January 2019 and returned to Florida Southern College, his alma mater, to teach. He also oversaw what he considered his crowning achievement: the Justice Teaching initiative, a curriculum that trained educators across Florida to teach legal principles as part of a broader civics program.
Michael Genden, a Miami-Dade Circuit judge for 24 years and Lewis's friend since law school, said Lewis was deeply critical of the state's civics education. "He was very critical that the state did not do a good enough job of teaching kids about civics," Genden said. Genden flew to Tallahassee for six years to help with the program.
Lewis himself traveled to schools, staged mock trials, and handed out copies of the Constitution. Genden summed up his friend simply: "He was a human being first, and a lawyer second."
The passing of notable public figures always invites reflection on what they built and what endures. In Lewis's case, the answer depends on which side of Florida's judicial divide you stand.
A Florida Supreme Court spokesman said Lewis will lie in state in the court's rotunda from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on June 11. Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz will deliver remarks, and members of the court will ceremonially receive the body.
Lewis's mandatory retirement in 2019, alongside Pariente and Quince, gave DeSantis the chance to install justices more aligned with the conservative governing vision that Florida voters had chosen. The court shifted. Lewis's brand of judicial activism receded. Whether that shift was a correction or a loss depends on your view of what courts are for.
Conservatives had real disagreements with Lewis's approach. But a man who kept coal on his desk, brought his disabled daughter to bar events, and spent his retirement teaching schoolchildren about the Constitution was not pretending. He believed what he believed. The right answer was to beat his ideas at the ballot box and in the appointment process, which Florida eventually did.