Biden puts Black woman on SCOTUS track
WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden said Tuesday that he plans to nominate a prominent judge to the federal appellate bench, a promotion that is sure to stir speculation about her potential future nomination to the Supreme Court.
U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, appointed to the federal court by President Barack Obama in 2013, will be nominated to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. That court, one of the most high-profile in the nation, has long been viewed as a steppingstone for Supreme Court nominees.
Biden has promised to name a Black woman to the Supreme Court for the first time in U.S. history, and Jackson’s name has appeared in the mix of leading candidates. She was on Obama’s short list after Associate Justice Antonin Scalia’s death in 2016. Biden’s first opportunity to follow through on the promise would likely come if Associate Justice Stephen Breyer, 82, retires sometime before the 2022 midterm election.
At 50, Jackson could serve decades on the court. She won Senate confirmation for the district court in 2013 on a voice vote – signaling bipartisan appeal.
Jackson is likely to receive a more aggressive line of questioning from Senate Republicans for her confirmation this time than she did eight years ago, after she ruled against President Donald Trump in a series of scathing and notable opinions.
She ruled in 2019 that Trump White House counsel Don McGahn had to testify during what was then a congressional impeachment inquiry into the former president’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Trump was impeached over that interaction, in which he pressured Zelenskiy to investigate Biden, but was acquitted in the Senate.
Trump attorneys argued the president had an “absolute immunity” from congressional subpoenas, allowing him to prevent aides’ testimony. Jackson rejected the argument.
“Stated simply, the primary takeaway from the past 250 years of recorded American history is that Presidents are not kings,” she wrote. “This means they do not have subjects, bound by loyalty or blood, whose destiny they are entitled to control.”
The case is pending at the D.C. Circuit, with arguments set for April.
In another 2019 opinion, Jackson dismissed an effort by the Trump administration to speed deportations. That opinion was reversed on appeal and the underlying case was stayed after Biden signed an order to review many of Trump’s immigration policies.
Long considered a conservative appeals court, the D.C. Circuit now has six Democratic-nominated judges and four named by Republicans. Two seats opened up shortly after Biden won the presidency. Merrick Garland, nominated to the court by President Bill Clinton, was confirmed on March 10 as attorney general. Judge David Tatel, also named by Clinton, announced he will take semi-retirement once his replacement is confirmed.
If confirmed by the Senate, Jackson would join the appellate bench at a time when progressive groups have decried a lack of diversity. There are currently four Black women judges out of more than 170 active judges on the federal appeals court.
In Biden’s announcement Tuesday, two other Black women were also included among the administration’s first slate of judicial nominees. The White House said the president will nominate patent attorney Tiffany Cunningham to be a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and attorney Candace Jackson-Akiwumi to the 7th Circuit.