New courthouse will be named for Cuban American who fought Miami-Dade's English-only law

Douglas Hanks, Miami Herald on Mar 18, 2025

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MIAMI — Miami-Dade’s new civil courthouse will be named after Osvaldo Soto, a Cuban American lawyer who led the fight in the 1980s to repeal the county’s English-only ordinance that, among other things, stopped clerks from conducting courthouse weddings in Spanish.

County commissioners unanimously approved naming the downtown building after Soto, who died in 2021 at the age of 91. A crusader for Hispanic rights amid a backlash against Cuban migrants fleeing to Miami during the 1980 Mariel boat lift, Soto pushed county leaders to accept the booming immigrant population as a vital part of the community.

“For the Hispanics who sit on this dais, we would not be here but for the work of Osvaldo Soto,” County Commissioner Raquel Regalado said ahead of the vote making Miami-Dade’s new Flagler Street facility what supporters said would be the first courthouse in Florida named after a Hispanic person.

The new 23-story courthouse is set to open this year, replacing the existing 1928 building next door. It once held a trial for Al Capone and was the seat of Dade County’s government until the construction of the Stephen P. Clark Government Center in the 1980s. Miami-Dade plans to sell the old courthouse.

County judges and lawyers, along with the Cuban American Bar Association, organized a campaign to name the new courthouse after Soto. That effort competed with a parallel push to name it after Harvey Ruvin, the longtime county clerk who died in 2022. The legislation that passed Tuesday creating the Soto honor also called for the court system to find a way to recognize Ruvin as well.

Soto is best remembered for his fight against the county’s English-only ordinance, which required most of the county’s business to be conducted in English. Passed by voters in 1980, it initially led to the clerk’s office — well before Ruvin’s election in 1992 — barring Spanish-language weddings. Miami-Dade’s transit system was also slow to add Spanish instructions to signs in its transit system. Commissioners voted unanimously to repeal the ordinance in 1993.

Before the repeal, Soto was arranging for free Spanish-language weddings in Little Havana and building up support for Dade County to retire its English-only policy. “It’s an insult to the Hispanic community,” Soto told reporters at the time.

Soto’s daughter, Judge Bertila Soto, was a key advocate in getting the $267 million courthouse plan approved by commissioners in 2019, and she returned to the Clark Center on Tuesday for the vote.

“It says to the citizens that everyone is welcome, no matter where they’re from. And that they’re part of the community,” Soto said after the vote. “And that this community respects everybody.”