How do judges of the Florida District Courts of Appeal reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.

Florida District Courts of Appeal / Joined 2002 / Active

Melanie May

Judge, Florida District Courts of Appeal

Melanie May is a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal, serving since 2002. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2002 · 24 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2002	Florida District Courts of Appeal	–	–

Education

Florida Atlantic University

Judicial Record

In our data, May authored 167 published opinions for the court (2008–2017), plus 6 dissents and 4 concurrences. Most cited: Williams v. State (77 citations).

Published, precedential opinions from the CourtListener corpus. Counts and rankings are objective and recomputable: how we count. We describe the record, not the judge. 177 of these were attributed to May by a unique court-, date-, and surname-match against our roster (marked ), because CourtListener recorded no author for them. Each links to the official text to verify. How we match.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
2010	Williams v. State†	40 So. 3d 72	77
2015	Donna Murray and Marc Murray v. HSBC Bank USA†	157 So. 3d 355	28
2010	Florida Hurricane Protection & Awning, Inc. v. Pastina†	43 So. 3d 893	19
2009	Velasquez v. State†	9 So. 3d 22	16
2014	Judy Rodrigo v. State Farm Florida Insurance Company†	144 So. 3d 690	15
2009	Estate of Tinervin v. Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co.†	23 So. 3d 1232	15
2009	Dr. Navarro's Vein Centre of the Palm Beach, Inc. v. Miller†	22 So. 3d 776	15
2016	Valerie Fulton, Fulton Insurance Agency, Inc., and Dean C. Fulton v. Judith Brancato†	189 So. 3d 967	14
2015	Orthopedic Specialists, as Assignee of Kelli Serridge v. Allstate Insurance Company· Dissent†	177 So. 3d 19	14
2010	Gonzalez v. State†	40 So. 3d 86	14
2010	Robin Roshkind, P.A. v. MacHiela†	45 So. 3d 480	14
2015	Department of Children And Families and A.H., a child v. T.S., the Mother and R.H., the Father†	154 So. 3d 1223	12
2010	Business Specialists, Inc. v. Land & Sea Petroleum, Inc.†	25 So. 3d 693	12
2009	Glantz and Glantz, PA v. Chinchilla†	17 So. 3d 711	12
2016	Miguel Angel Alfonso-Roche v. State of Florida†	199 So. 3d 941	11

Showing the 15 most-cited of 177 authored opinions in our data. “Cited” is inbound citations across the CourtListener corpus. Case links open the ruling’s full text (CourtListener) or its page here; read the methodology and verify against the primary source.

Questions & answers

How do judges of the Florida District Courts of Appeal reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court is Melanie May on?: Melanie May is a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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24 years on the Florida District Courts of Appeal. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).