With All Eyes On Supreme Court Hearing, Democrats Quietly Confirm 7 Other Judges

This week on Capitol Hill, all eyes were on Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson’s high-profile and historic confirmation hearing.

But in the background, Senate Democrats were quietly advancing lots of President Joe Biden’s other nominees to lifetime federal court seats — some of whom were also historic.

Democrats teed up and confirmed eight of Biden’s court picks as Jackson’s hearing was underway. That’s a huge number of judges to process in a matter of days, and brings Biden’s total number of confirmed judges to 56 — adding to his record of confirming more lifetime federal judges than decades of past presidents by this point in their terms.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) took a victory lap on the Senate floor on Thursday, though it was easy to miss with all the attention on the Supreme Court confirmation hearing.

“Yesterday we confirmed another six judges to important positions on the federal bench ― and all of them, I am happy to say, with bipartisan support,” he said. “We have now confirmed 56 ― 56! ― judges under this Democratic Senate majority, and I thank my colleagues for their patience and for keeping the pace moving here on the floor last night.”

One of the judicial nominees in this week’s mix was Alison Nathan, 49, who will now sit on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Nathan has served as a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York since 2011, and she previously served as associate White House counsel for President Barack Obama.

Nathan’s confirmation makes her the second openly lesbian woman to ever serve on a U.S. appeals court. The first was Judge Beth Robinson, who was just confirmed in November to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit.

The other Biden judicial nominees confirmed this week were all for U.S. district court seats, and reflected a diversity of backgrounds. They include Ruth Montenegro, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, was confirmed to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California. John Chun, who was confirmed to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, is the second Asian American federal district court judge in the entire state. Victoria Calvert, now a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, is the second Black woman to ever serve on this court.

Judicial confirmations might seem like a dry subject. But federal judges typically remain in their seats for decades and long after the presidents who nominated them leave office, and their rulings affect millions of Americans across the country. This is why a president’s federal judges are often considered his or her greatest legacy.

Biden has made it a top priority to bring diversity to the federal bench in terms of demographics like race and gender, but also in terms of professional backgrounds. His dozens of judicial nominees to date mark a huge departure from the typical white, male corporate lawyers who are almost always tapped for lifetime federal judgeships.

So far, Biden’s court picks have included public defenders, voting rights lawyers and union organizers, in addition to historic firsts with Native Americans, Black women, LGBTQ nominees and Muslim Americans. Out of the 40 judges he confirmed by the end of 2021, 32 were women, 27 were people of color, 21 were women of color and 27 had professionally diverse backgrounds. Fifteen were former public defenders.

Rakim Brooks, president of the progressive judicial advocacy group Alliance for Justice, said this week’s confirmed judges continue Biden’s trend of making the nation’s courts better reflect the people they serve.

“It’s particularly notable how few members of the LGBTQ+ community currently serve on our courts,” Brooks said in a statement. “We are fighting hard to change that and are confident the confirmation of Alison Nathan, like Beth Robinson before her, will blaze a path forward.”