April 6, 2021 10:40 a.m. Alcee Hastings — a longtime Florida representative in the House who was elected to Congress after he was impeached as judge — died Tuesday morning, the Orlando Sun-Sentinel reported. Hastings was 84 years old, and has been suffering Stage 4 pancreatic cancer since late 2018. Hastings was serving his 15th term in the House, representing a swath of South Florida. His congressional career was often overshadowed by the controversy that preceded it. A pioneering civil rights lawyer who spearheaded several cases that sought to desegregate South Florida, Hastings was made a state court judge in 1977. His appointment to the federal judiciary by President Jimmy Carter in 1979 made him the first Black federal judge in Florida.