If Ruben Castillo had been told in law school that his career would bring a succession of pay cuts, he never would have believed it.
He began with a lucrative job at a prestigious Chicago law firm. He took a salary cut to become an assistant U.S. attorney, and another to work for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. If he gets his way, he would take yet another pay cut to become, at 39, the first Latino U.S. District Court judge from Illinois.
He’s also would be the first attorney with a background in public interest and civil rights law to be named to the federal bench in Chicago in more than a decade.
Harvey Grossman, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union in Chicago, said, “Ruben’s nomination brings diversity to the bench not simply in terms of ethnicity but also by adding to the court-for the first time in 12 years-a lawyer who has had direct experience representing people who traditionally have had great difficulty getting access to the courts and justice.”
The fact that the Latino community is now seen as larger, “that there are more Hispanic voters and state and local politicians underscored our lack of representation at the federal level,” Castillo said.
Castillo, who wears horned-rimmed Coke-bottle-thick glasses and has a fascination for the legal thrillers of John Grisham and Scott Turow and for the Chicago Blackhawks, played a leading role in helping get Chicago’s Latino community on the map. In 1988, he left his post as an assistant U.S. attorney in Chicago to become director and regional counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the Latino civil rights and advocacy group known as MALDEF.
He represented the group in redistricting cases that led to the creation of the first Hispanic-majority congressional district in Illinois and increased the number of Latino-majority aldermanic and state legislative districts.
Grossman said, “The redistricting and employment discrimination cases he litigated at MALDEF involve some of the most complex developing laws the federal courts deal with.”
Also under Castillo’s watch, MALDEF initiated “Hagase Contar,” “Make Yourself Count,” a bilingual campaign urging Hispanics to participate in the 1990 U.S. Census.
“Essentially, we vouched for the government, telling Hispanics that answering the census would lead to greater benefits for their communities,” Castillo said.
Accepting the MALDEF job led to the second pay cut he had taken since graduating from Northwestern University Law School in 1979. The first occurred when he accepted the job as an assistant U.S. attorney, leaving a lucrative position as an associate with the law firm Jenner & Block.
Castillo left MALDEF in 1991 to become the first Hispanic partner at Kirkland & Ellis. He would take his third pay cut, which he termed “significant,” if the Senate confirms him for a seat on the District Court.
Castillo’s is the first nomination President Clinton has made to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, whose 22 members hear civil and criminal cases involving federal law. It is the first court to consider cases concerning constitutional issues.
Castillo would fill one of three vacancies on the court. It is unclear when Clinton would nominate people for the other two.
“Ruben Castillo has accomplished everything any lawyer could hope to accomplish,” said Steven Lubet, a law professor of Castillo’s who has recruited him to be a volunteer trial advocacy professor. “I think he’s going to achieve even greater things on the bench.”
It was a long path from Grand and Ashland Avenues in the West Town neighborhood where Castillo grew up to Kirkland & Ellis’s marble-walled law offices on the 59th floor of the Amoco Building in downtown Chicago.
It’s longer yet from Oaxaca, Mexico, and Ponce, Puerto Rico, the hometowns, respectively, of his father, Ruben N. Castillo Sr., and his mother, Carmen Castillo, both 68.
“We didn’t know how to direct him to become a lawyer. He had to orient himself,” said Ruben Castillo Sr., a building maintenance worker who never went past elementary school in his native Mexico.
He and his wife, a factory worker, scrimped and saved to help pay their son’s way through Catholic schools, college and law school.
“If you don’t smoke cigars or drink beer, you can save a lot of money,” Castillo Sr. said.
His son worked nights as a clerk in Cook County Circuit Court to help pay his way through college and law school.
Castillo Jr. said Carmen Castillo was one influence pointing him toward law school, as they argued over things like his curfew and how much time he could spend playing ice hockey instead of studying.
“When you’re a kid debating your mother, you always lose. I saw law as a career that could allow me to win some arguments,” he said.
Another big influence was his Catholic education.
“It’s no accident that I’ve gotten where I am,” he said. “For immigrant families, the public school system was just not the answer it was in the 1950s. I’ve had a fundamental Catholic education.”
He graduated from the now-shuttered St. Columbkille parochial school, Gordon Technical High School and Loyola University.
“I was an altar boy,” he recalled. “There was an aspect of getting up at 6 a.m. for 6:30 mass that instilled the discipline I needed later to get up early and get into the office on weekends to prepare cases for the U.S. attorney’s office.”
Rev. Peter Rodriguez, who performed the ceremony when Castillo married Sylvia Mojica and who has known him since he was in elementary school, remembered him as “a shy boy, always with a book in his hand.”
Castillo takes pride in all of his heritage.
“My very existence breaks up all the stereotypes of tensions between Mexican-Americans and Puerto Ricans,” he said. “At the same time, I am proud of being a Chicagoan.”
Castillo lives on the city’s Northwest Side with his wife, who is Puerto Rican, and their children, Francisca, 12, and Roberto, 10. His office is decorated with his children’s photographs and artwork, as well as community testimonials.
Now, as he prepares for the possibility of taking another pay cut, he said, “In my life, I’ve worked for a lot less. I’m not complaining.”
