Biographical Statement

Carlos A. González is an attorney living and practicing in Atlanta, Georgia, where he focuses his practice on civil litigation in state and federal courts. In addition to his traditional legal practice, Mr. González also serves as a permanent arbitrator on a collective bargaining agreementand and is a special master for federal courts in Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee. He has also successfully mediated settlements in long-standing lawsuits and class action cases.

As a special master, he has had direct responsibility for coordinating several hundred million dollars in court-ordered remedial relief and managing the implementation of federal court decrees involving the reform of state institutions and agencies. Mr. González holds evidentiary hearings and files reports and recommendations with the district court on a range of substantive and procedural issues. His first federal appointment as a special master came in 1993, less than four years after graduating from Vanderbilt University Law School. In 2008, he was named to a permanent panel of arbitrators in the collective bargaining agreement between the Kroger Company and UFCW Local 1995.

Besides his ongoing special master appointments, Mr. González has a proven record of successfully mediating complex legal controversies. He has served as a private mediator and a court-appointed mediator in federal class-action law suits and M.D.L. cases involving employment, civil rights, ERISA, commercial disputes, and price-fixing claims. In 2000, he was appointed to mediate one of the oldest federal cases pending in Tennessee, Geier and The United States v. Tennessee. The case involved the desegregation of the State's public system of higher education. The mediation was deemed to be successful by all the parties, and the Sixth Circuit described the Geier case as "rare and exceptional" and one of "national significance." 372 F.3d at 796 (2004).

Mr. González has also been an Adjunct Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University School of Law. His teaching emphasis is on the appropriate uses and limits of judicial oversight in the context of institutional reform litigation.

A 1989 Graduate of Vanderbilt University Law School, Mr. González holds a Master of Arts in Religious Studies from Yale Divinity School (1986), and a B.S. in Political Science from The Florida State University (1983). While at Vanderbilt, Mr. González was elected to the Vanderbilt Law Review, where he served as an associate editor. He was the 1989 recipient of the faculty-selected Vanderbilt Law Review Note Award for his published article on immigration reform. 41 Vand. L. Rev. 1323 (1988). Following law school, Mr. González served as a law clerk to The Honorable Harold L. Murphy of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, an appointment followed by almost two years as an attorney in the Atlanta law firm of Rogers & Hardin.

Among other recognitions, Mr. González is a Charter Member and Fellow of the Academy of Court-Appointed Masters, listed in Marquis Who's Who in America and Who's Who in American Law, and has an AV rating from Martindale-Hubbell. He is a member of the Board of Directors of The Source For Learning and is on the Board of Visitors for Berry College. Mr. González has appeared on the CBS television news magazine 60 Minutes and been interviewed by CNN, The New York Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education and other national and regional publications.

He has served as a panel member discussing litigation under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 at the 2003 Annual National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in American Higher Education. Mr. González has presented remarks at the Alabama Kellogg Conference on the relationship between historically white and historically black land grant universities, and has addressed the Council of Historically Black Graduate Schools. He has led discussions on the legal standards relevant to the award of college financial aid for the Southern Regional Education Board, and been a panel member on CLE seminars.

Mr. González lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with his wife, Marilyn, and their two sons, Matthew and Jordan. He was born in Havana, Cuba, and immigrated to the United States as an infant. His family settled in Rome, Georgia, where Mr. González spent his formative years.

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