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 2011 / Active

Stephanie W. Ray

Judge, Florida District Courts of Appeal

Stephanie W. Ray is a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal, serving since 2011. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1970 · age 56
Tenure: Since 2011 · 15 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2011	Florida District Courts of Appeal	–	–

Education

Vanderbilt University
Florida State University

Judicial Record

In our data, Ray authored 68 published opinions for the court (2011–2018), plus 3 dissents and 5 concurrences. Most cited: Ronald Pak Zern v. State of Florida (49 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. 72 of these were attributed to Ray 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
2016	Ronald Pak Zern v. State of Florida†	191 So. 3d 962	49
2014	Garrett v. State†	148 So. 3d 466	26
2011	Smith v. State	76 So. 3d 379	22
2015	In the Interest of Y v. a Minor Child†	160 So. 3d 576	17
2016	Sandra Sheridan v. State of Florida, Department of Health†	182 So. 3d 787	16
2015	Scherer v. Volusia County Department of Corrections· Dissent†	171 So. 3d 135	16
2015	Department of Revenue v. Reyes†	181 So. 3d 1270	15
2012	Robinson v. Department of Health†	89 So. 3d 1079	15
2012	14302 Marina San Pablo Place SPE, LLC v. VCP-San Pablo, Ltd.· Concurrence†	92 So. 3d 320	14
2012	Dianne v. Wingate†	84 So. 3d 427	14
2016	Kyree Luis Perez v. State of Florida†	187 So. 3d 1279	13
2012	Eutsay v. State†	103 So. 3d 181	13
2013	City of Freeport v. Beach Community Bank†	108 So. 3d 684	12
2013	Partlow v. State†	134 So. 3d 1027	12
2014	Harrison v. State†	146 So. 3d 76	10

Showing the 15 most-cited of 76 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 Stephanie W. Ray on?: Stephanie W. Ray is a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal.

Sources

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

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15 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).