Judge Nancy Perez

Judge Nancy Perez (1953-) was one of eleven children of Puerto Rican migrant farm workers. She was born near Buffalo, New York, because her mother was picking strawberries and cherries there. Nancy picked tomatoes in New Jersey at the age of eleven. Then her father decided his children would move beyond migrant farming with education, and relocated the family to the Fort Myers area. The children no longer missed school to pick crops, and most of them graduated from high school, four from college.

With an excellent academic record, Nancy received scholarships that put her through Edison Community College and Florida State University, where she received her B.S. in business and accounting in 1975. She went on to law school for many reasons, she said later, including the treatment of migrant workers that she had seen first-hand. For four years, she worked for the Migrant Farmworkers Division of Georgia Legal Services before becoming a supervisor for the Association of Migrant Associations, semi-governmental organization in Tallahassee. After passing The Florida Bar in 1983, Judge Perez worked as an assistant public defender in West Palm Beach. She began serving on the Bench in 1991. Judge Perez is the first Hispanic American judge in Palm Beach County.