President Biden’s Historic Pace of Judicial Nominees

Yesterday I suggested that Senate Democrats really need to pick up the pace in confirming federal judges:

With Judge Jackson’s confirmation, there are eight vacancies on the federal courts of appeals, which are the last stop for thousands of cases. The president has announced nominees for six of those seats.

Of the more than 80 open spots on the federal courts, Mr. Biden has named 13 candidates, who are diverse in both their backgrounds and professional experience.

President Biden is doing his part. Jason Easley reports, Biden Is Nominating Judicial Nominees Faster Than Any Modern President: Biden has nominated 24 judicial nominees faster than any president in modern history. Brookings confirmed that Biden is appointing more nominees earlier in his term than any president since 1981.

Today the White House announce its fourth slate of judicial nominees. President Biden Announces 4th Slate of Judicial Nominations:

As he continues to move at an historic pace with respect to judicial nominees, the President is announcing five new candidates for the federal bench and two new candidates for District of Columbia courts, all of whom are extraordinarily qualified, experienced, and devoted to the rule of law and our Constitution. [Six of the seven new nominees are women.]

These choices also continue to fulfill the President’s promise to ensure that the nation’s courts reflect the diversity that is one of our greatest assets as a country — both in terms of personal and professional backgrounds.

For example, this slate includes:

• • • A nationally-recognized leader on voting rights who would be the only Latina serving on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
    • A former public defender and current civil rights plaintiff’s attorney who would be the second African American woman judge actively serving on the District Court for the District of Columbia
    • A federal prosecutor who would be the first judge of South Asian descent to serve on the District Court for the District of Connecticut
    • A Department of Justice lawyer with two decades of civil rights experience, including as Deputy Chief of the Appellate Section in the Civil Rights Division
    • A magistrate judge on the D.C. Superior Court with deep experience in domestic violence and family law issues

This is President Biden’s fourth round of names for federal judicial positions, bringing the number of announced federal judicial nominees to 24.

The White House press release includes the resumes of all the nominees, including:

• Myrna Pérez, the director of the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights and Elections Program at the New York University (NYU) School of Law, to the U.S. Court of Appeals Second Circuit
• Judge Sarah A. L. Merriam, currently the U.S. Magistrate Judge for the District of Connecticut, to the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut
• Sarala Vidya Nagala, the Deputy Chief of the Major Crimes Unit in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Connecticut, to the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut
• Judge Omar A. Williams, a Superior Court Judge in Hartford, Connecticut, to the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut
• Jia M. Cobb, a partner at Relman Colfax, to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia
• Tovah R. Calderon, currently serving as an Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals
• Judge Kenia Seoane Lopez, currently a Magistrate Judge on the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, to the Superior Court of the District of Columbia

The Washington Post reports on Biden’s 19 earlier nominees, Biden has nominated as many minority women to be judges in four months as Trump had confirmed in four years:

President Biden and the Democrat-led Senate have moved quickly to boost minority and female representation on the federal courtsfollowing Donald Trump’s four-year push to remake the judiciary, in which he nominated a large share of White, male justices.

Biden’s early judicial slate represents a departure from his recent predecessors; his initial picks are more diverse, and Biden rolled out more nominations earlier in his presidency than others.

Fifteen of his 19 nominees so far are women, including 11 women from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. The Senate confirmed U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson — widely considered a Supreme Court contender — to the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Monday. Additionally, it gave final approval to Zahid Quraishi, a magistrate judge from New Jersey and the first Muslim confirmed as a federal judge, in a bipartisan vote on Thursday.

“This trailblazing slate of nominees draws from the very best and brightest minds of the American legal profession,” Biden said in a statement when announcing the nominees. “Each is deeply qualified and prepared to deliver justice faithfully under our Constitution and impartially to the American people — and together they represent the broad diversity of background, experience, and perspective that makes our nation strong.”

In his first four months, Biden nominated as many minority women to the federal bench as Trump had confirmed in his entire four years. A Washington Post analysis of Federal Judicial Center data shows all women, regardless of race or ethnicity, are underrepresented on the judiciary.

[A]s part of his call for a more diverse judiciary, Biden pledged to name the first Black woman to the Supreme Court. Justice Sonia Sotomayor is the only Latina and woman of color to serve on the high court thus far. Yet, in lower federal courts, the share of Hispanic judges remains far behind the share of Hispanic-identifying people in the United States.

There is a lot of work to be done to reduce that gap, according to Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “It is not enough” that only three nominees out of 19 are Latinos, Saenz said. “It’s not a problem that they created, but they have an opportunity to fix it.”

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Biden’s nominations to the appellate courts would reduce the gender and racial gaps in some of the circuits. Gustavo Gelpí will be the only Latino judge in the 1st Circuit that oversees Puerto Rico in addition to New England if the Senate confirms him. If confirmed, Eunice C. Lee and Candace Jackson-Akiwumi would be the only minority women in the 2nd and the 7th circuits, respectively.

Yet, new seats free up in the circuits for Biden to fill. More than three decades after she entered the federal judiciary, Donald, who is the only woman of color on the 6th Circuit, announced that she will take senior status once her seat is filled by Biden. “I embraced the job fully with competence and energy, so that in becoming first, I would make sure that I wouldn’t be a last on the job,” Donald said.

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Cheri Beasley, the former chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court who was first Black woman to serve in that role and a U.S. Senate candidate for that state … is another judge mentioned as one of Biden’s potential contenders for the Supreme Court. “I certainly have been very honored to be mentioned for consideration as a Supreme Court nominee. At this point, I am really focused on my U.S. Senate run,” she said.

According to data collected by the Brennan Center for Justice, state Supreme Courts also don’t reflect an increasingly diverse population. Women account for only 39 percent of state Supreme Court justices. Latinas and women of color are only 8 percent.

“State judiciaries are one of the pipelines to the federal bench,” said Alicia Bannon, managing director of the center’s Democracy Program. “And the fact that there is not a tremendous amount of diversity on the state benches can also be one challenge in bringing greater diversity to the federal bench.”

As of today, there is no state Supreme Court justice identifying with a racial or ethnic minority in 22 states. Ten states have not had any Hispanic or person of color as a judge since at least 1960, when data collection began: Alaska, Kansas, Maine, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont and Wyoming.

Note: Arizona Supreme Court Justice Andrew W. Gould retired on April 1, 2021. 5 women are among 7 candidates for Arizona Supreme Court vacancy. There is currently only one woman on the Governor Doug Ducey “packed” Arizona Supreme Court, Vice Chief Justice Ann Timmer. Governor Ducey has only appointed men to the court.

The Arizona Supreme Court from left are Robert Brutinel, John Lopez, John Pelander, Scott Bales, Andrew Gould (ret.), Clint Bolick, Ann Scott Timmer.