This competitive award recognizes a project of significant impact work undertaken by a FFLA grantee. To be eligible, the project must affect a substantial number of poor persons, address an important poverty-law issue, involve a significant commitment of grantee program resources and staff, and reflect legal work which is of a high professional level.
The Steven M. Goldstein Award for Excellence was established by The Florida Bar Foundation (now FFLA) board of directors in 1995 to honor the memory of Steven M. Goldstein. Goldstein, a former legal services attorney and professor of law at Florida State University College of Law, was a tireless advocate of the legal rights of the poor and disadvantaged and was respected nationally for his dedication to upholding the constitutional rights of those with unpopular causes. At the time of his death in 1994, at the age of 49, Goldstein was chair of the legal assistance for the poor grant committee and about to become secretary-treasurer of the Foundation. For many years, he served as the touchstone by which we measured the significance of our mission and its progress.
In 2019, the award was renamed the Goldstein – Van Nortwick Award for Excellence. Goldstein was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously in 1995. Twenty years later, in 2015, the Medal of Honor was awarded to former Foundation president William A. Van Nortwick for his decades of leadership involving pro bono and legal services. Bill and Steve knew each other for years, meeting first as Foundation board members in 1990. They became fast friends and even running and fishing buddies. They made board meetings interesting, often taking opposite sides on important legal aid issues. Yet, they had the utmost respect for each other.
On January 12, 2019, Bill passed away. Bill and Steve both were wholly committed to improving Florida’s justice system and did so with grace and passion. The newly-named award honors the life, legacy and friendship of two champions whose commitment to those less fortunate while remaining true to the highest principles of our judicial system helped create the touchstone by which we measure excellence.
Goldstein – Van Nortwick Award Recipients
| Year | Honoree | Project |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Florida Health Justice Project (tie) | FHJP secured coverage of critically necessary medical supplies for low-income, medically fragile adults reaching the age of 21. As a result of litigation and settlement, Medicaid coverage has been extended to all Florida Medicaid recipients, ensuring they will continue receiving medical supplies essential to their health. |
| 2024 | Florida Health Justice Project and Southern Legal Counsel (tie) | FHJP and SLC overturned a Florida Agency for Healthcare Administration rule and subsequent state statute that stopped Medicaid coverage of gender-affirming care for low-income Floridians. Access to critical medical care for more than 12,000 Florida Medicaid beneficiaries was restored. |
| 2024 | Second Runner-up: ACLU of Florida, Legal Services of Greater Miami and Southern Legal Counsel | Attorneys brought a federal lawsuit in the Southern District of Florida challenging the City of Miami's practice of seizing and destroying property belonging to homeless individuals. The litigation resulted in a settlement agreement in which the city agreed to amend its policies, pay damages to the four plaintiffs and pay attorney's fees and costs. |
| 2022 | Community Law Program and Bay Area Legal Services | The Pinellas Eviction Diversion Program combined mediation, legal assistance, rental assistance navigation, and housing navigation services in a holistic setting to help tenants financially impacted by COVID-19 avoid homelessness. |
| 2022 | First Runner-up: Florida Health Justice Project | The Enforcing Medicaid Rights of Former Foster Youth Project worked to reform, statewide, the Department of Children and Families’ flawed eligibility determination process for young adults who, because they have aged out of foster care, remain eligible for Medicaid until their 26th birthday. |
| 2022 | Second Runner-up: Americans for Immigrant Justice | AIJ’s COVID in Immigration Detention litigation was an effort to obtain the release from ICE custody of immigrants, with the initial focus on persons with comorbidities for whom detention conditions threatened their lives on a daily basis, holding ICE accountable to its obligations under the CDC guidelines. |
| 2020 | Florida Legal Services | Challenging the systemic inadequacy of mental health treatment for thousands incarcerated in the Florida Department of Corrections’ inpatient prison units |
| 2020 | First Runner-Up: Florida Health Justice Project, Jacksonville Area Legal Aid and special counsel Disability Rights Florida | Using a medical-legal partnership and a multi-prong advocacy approach to attain relief for thousands by reforming Florida’s flawed Medicaid “ex parte review” process |
| 2020 | Second Runner-Up: Florida Justice Institute | Requiring the state to identify, test, evaluate and treat the estimated 20,000 Florida prisoners with Hepatitis C, likely preventing hundreds of deaths from liver failure, alleviating the suffering of hundreds more and ensuring that the disease cannot be spread further throughout the state when prisoners are released |
| 2018 | Florida Justice Institute | Requiring Florida's prisons to be accessible for prisoners with physical disabilities |
| 2018 | First Runner-Up: Jacksonville Area Legal Aid | Strengthening senior home ownership against wrongful reverse mortgage foreclosure practices |
| 2018 | Second Runner-Up: Florida Legal Services, Jacksonville Area Legal Aid and Legal Services of Greater Miami joint project | Nutrition security for Floridians with disabilities |
| 2016 | Florida Legal Services | Medicaid Waiver HMOs for the Chronically Ill |
| 2016 | First Runner-Up: Florida State University Public Interest Law Center | Protecting Chronic and Seriously Ill Children from Losing Health Services |
| 2016 | Second Runner-Up: Southern Legal Counsel | Access to Courts for Indigent Litigants in the Sixth Judicial Circuit |
| 2014 | Southern Legal Counsel | Remedying due process violations by Florida's developmental disabilities Medicaid waiver program |
| 2014 | First Runner-Up: Florida Legal Services Florida Institutional Legal Services Project | Establishment of due process rights for people with developmental disabilities |
| 2014 | Second Runner-Up: Legal Services of Greater Miami Inc | The Consortium Project |
| 2012 | Florida Legal Services | Challenge to Governor Rick Scott's Suspension of Florida's Administrative Procedures Act |
| 2012 | First Runner-Up: Southern Legal Counsel Inc. | Statewide Litigation to Establish a Program to Transition Medicaid Recipients in Nursing Homes into the Community |
| 2012 | Second Runner-Up (tie): Community Legal Services of Mid-Florida Inc. | Challenge to Sanford Housing Authority's Proposed Demolition of Affordable Public Housing |
| 2012 | Second Runner-Up (tie): Florida Justice Institute Inc. and Legal Services of Greater Miami Inc. | Challenge to Public Housing Authority's Illegal Denial of Section 8 Housing Assistance |
| 2010 | Florida Equal Justice Center, Legal Aid Society of Palm Beach County, and Florida Legal Services | A Challenge to the City of Lake Worth's Use of Selective Code Enforcement |
| 2010 | Runner Up: Florida Legal Services Migrant Farmworker Justice Project | Challenging Minimum Wage and Employment Law Violations |
| 2010 | Runner Up: Gulfcoast Legal Services | Obtaining Justice for Homeowners Victimized by Foreclosure Rescue Scams |
| 2008 | Florida Institutional Legal Services and Florida Justice Institute | Vulnerable State Prison Inmates Project |
| 2008 | Runner Up: Legal Aid Service of Broward County | Code Enforcement Advocacy |
| 2008 | Runners Up: Florida Institutional Legal Services and Southern Legal Counsel | Right to Treatment Issues of Florida's Civil Confinement of Sex Offenders |
| 2006 | Florida Legal Services, Legal Aid Service of Broward County, Legal Aid Society of Palm Beach County, and the Legal Aid Society of the Orange County Bar Association | Prescription Drug Access Project |
| 2006 | Runner Up: Legal Services of North Florida | Access to School Entrance in Leon County for Homeless Children and Youth Project |
| 2006 | Runner Up: Legal Services of Greater Miami | Cuban-Haitian Entrant Project |
| 2003 | Florida Justice Institute, Inc. and Florida Institutional Legal Services, Inc. | Close Management Project |
| 2003 | Runner Up: Central Florida Legal Services, Inc. | Daytona Beach Housing Authority Project |
| 2003 | Runners Up: University of Miami School of Law, Children and Youth Law Clinic and Legal Aid Society of Palm Beach County | Older Foster Youth Advocacy Project |
| 2001 | Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, Florida Justice Institute and Florida Legal Services | Naturalization Collaborative Project |
| 2001 | Runner Up: Florida Institutional Legal Services | Good Time Credit Project |
| 2001 | Runner Up: University of Miami School of Law and Children and Youth Law Clinic | Foster Children's Mental Health Rights Project |
| 2001 | Runner Up: Florida Legal Services | Title Loan Project |
| 1999 | Florida Legal Services | Migrant Farmworker Justice Project |
| 1999 | Runners Up: Legal Services of Greater Miami and Dade County Bar Association | Society Villa Fair Mobile Home Park and Fowler's Mobile Home Park Project |
