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 2001 / Served to 2004

Virginia Maria Hernandez Covington

Judge, Florida District Courts of Appeal

Virginia Maria Hernandez Covington was a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal, who joined the court in 2001. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1955 · age 71
Tenure: 2001–2004 · 3 yrs
Education: The of Tampa 1976

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2001	Florida District Courts of Appeal	–	–

Education

Georgetown University
The University of Tampa	B.S.	1976
The University of Tampa	M.B.A.	1977

Judicial Record

In our data, Covington authored 68 published opinions for the court (2001–2004). Most cited: J.L. v. Department of Children & Family Services (15 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. 68 of these were attributed to Covington 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
2002	J.L. v. Department of Children & Family Services†	824 So. 2d 1023	15
2002	M.L. v. State†	819 So. 2d 240	12
2004	O.M. v. Department of Children & Family Services†	863 So. 2d 476	8
2003	J.D.F. v. State†	870 So. 2d 86	5
2003	King v. Fergeson, Skipper, Shaw, Keyser, Baron, & Tirabassi, P.A.†	862 So. 2d 873	4
2004	Butler v. Butler†	870 So. 2d 239	2
2003	State v. Martinez†	870 So. 2d 18	2
2003	Harper v. Harper†	848 So. 2d 1179	2
2003	Daeda v. State†	841 So. 2d 632	2
2003	Hoffman v. State†	842 So. 2d 895	2
2002	Norris v. State†	832 So. 2d 969	2
2002	Miller v. State†	828 So. 2d 1055	2
2004	Sloan v. State†	884 So. 2d 378	1
2004	Pope v. Quattelbaum†	884 So. 2d 301	1
2004	Gonzalez v. State†	884 So. 2d 256	1

Showing the 15 most-cited of 68 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 was Virginia Maria Hernandez Covington on?: Virginia Maria Hernandez Covington was 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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3 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).