Senate sends Biden judges to California courts as year closes. Will more follow in 2022?
President Joe Biden wants to fix California’s long-standing federal judge shortage that, combined with restraints of the pandemic, has led to a pileup of cases throughout the state.
California still had 15 vacancies in its federal district courts after the Senate confirmed four new judges last week. Some seats have been vacant for five years. Two more judges are expected to vacate their seats in 2022.
Separately, the Senate last week confirmed two of Biden’s nominees to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers California. They are Judge Lucy Haeran Koh of California, the first Korean American woman to rule on a federal circuit court of appeals, and Judge Jennifer Sung from Oregon, who will be Oregon’s first person from the Asian American Pacific Islander community to serve on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Senate scrambled to confirm four of Biden’s picks district courts in California last Friday into Saturday morning:
- Judge Linda Lopez to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California
- Judge Jinsook Ohta to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California
- Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong to the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California
- Judge Jennifer Thurston to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California
Overwhelmed court dockets in California caused many hearings to be delayed for months during the pandemic, including in a lawsuit that Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Tulare, filed against one of his former constituents over an alleged harassment campaign.
“California has been in a judicial emergency with the most overcrowded dockets in the country,” California Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla, both Democrats, said in a joint statement about the nominations. “Over the past year, we have worked closely with President Biden and our Senate colleagues to nominate judges who bring a wealth of experience as well as personal and professional diversity to the federal bench.”
Little time for judicial confirmations
Judges picked by the president and approved by the Senate for the Supreme Court and federal circuit and district courts generally serve for life.
Nominations before the Senate must be confirmed or denied within the same session of Congress, otherwise they go back to the president to choose again, meaning that some of Biden’s picks had to be approved before Jan. 3 when the next session begins.
Often, the Senate will vote to suspend that rule and allow nominations to carry over into the next session, but senators must unanimously agree to do that.
Biden has four other pending nominees for California’s federal district courts who have yet to make it to the full Senate, thus are not limited by the same time constraints.
Last week he put forward new nominees for four more vacancies, meaning he could soon fill eight openings on federal courts in California in the coming year.
Biden will have a tougher time nominating in 2023
Biden’s nominees to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals won close votes to secure their appointments.
The Senate voted to confirm Koh on party lines, 50-45, with five Republicans absent. Sung was confirmed 50-49, with one Republican absent.
Koh was previously nominated for the position during the Obama era, but Senate Republicans refused to vote on her confirmation. Former President Donald Trump nominated someone else for the position.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Koh to serve on the Santa Clara County Superior Court in 2008. In 2010, Koh was confirmed to serve on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
Several senators were absent later in the week for the four new district judges’ confirmations as they prepared to break for the winter holidays.
Party-line votes suggest that Biden will face stronger backlash to future nominations if Republicans win control of the Senate in the 2022 midterm elections. The Senate returns all pending nominations at the end of a Congress; the next Congress begins on Jan. 3, 2023.
Currently, the Senate is split 50-50. Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat, serves as the tie breaker in simple-majority votes that fall on party lines.
Biden announced 73 nominees for federal judicial positions this year, one more person than Trump named during his first year in office, as the current administration aims to impact U.S. courts from the bottom up.
The Senate solidified Biden’s 40th pick early Saturday morning, marking the most judicial nominees confirmed in a year since former President Ronald Reagan held office.
Though these picks are recommended by a Democrat, California’s judicial bench is not entirely liberal.
A federal judge in Southern California, Roger Benitez, recently decided to overturn the state’s long-standing assault weapons ban. Benitez, who has long sided with gun rights groups in his rulings, was nominated by former President George W. Bush in 2003 with the support of Feinstein and former California Sen. Barbara Boxer, a Democrat. He was confirmed by all but one senator, a Democrat from Illinois, in 2004.
This story was originally published December 20, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
