The City of Miami Beach has been at the forefront of the fight for the rights and well-being of its residents, regardless of status. The City has perennially been a model for how a municipality should work for the public interest. The City, under the leadership of its City Manager and Attorneys, embraces the concept of municipal governments utilizing legal authority to provide greater protections to their residents than the basic threshold offered by the State and Federal constitutions or state and federal laws. The City regularly takes on legal battles that move the dial on quality of life and civil rights issues, such as raising the minimum wage and sanctuary city status. These challenges are enormously important, even when the outcome is not favorable because they advance legal advocacy on behalf of the City’s most vulnerable residents at a time when it is desperately needed. When issues like sea level rise, resiliency, tolerance, livability, affordability and subsistence are going un-addressed at the national level, communities can lean on this model, which provides a legal roadmap to tackle those issues at the local level.  For this reason, The City of Miami Beach is receiving the LatinoJustice PRLDEF 2019 Community Justice Award. 
 
The award will be accepted on behalf of the city of Miami Beach by:

• Raul J. Aguila, First Assistant City Attorney for the City of Miami Beach since 2014, has been practicing with the Miami Beach City Attorney’s Office since 1993, guided by his vision of a municipality grounded in principles of sustainability, vocal democracy and active citizenry.
• Jimmy Morales, City Manager for the City of Miami Beach since 2013 is a Shareholder with Stearns Weaver Miller Weissler Alhadeff & Sitterson, P.A. and formerly served on the Miami-Dade County Board of Commissioners.
• Robert Rosenwald, City Attorney for the City of Miami Beach since 2010, has litigated important cases arising under the First, Second, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, focusing on economic justice, marriage equality, environmental justice and immigrant justice.