New picks for federal judgeships emphasize diversity

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden began a drive to reshape the federal courts Tuesday with a burst of judicial nominations that emphasized diversity and drew from a broad range of backgrounds including public defenders.

The effort is motivated in part by a desire to offset the conservative mark stamped on the federal judiciary by former President Donald Trump, who won confirmation of more than 220 judges, mostly white men. But Biden’s first round of nominations also sought to make good on his campaign promise to draw from a more diverse pool than either party has in the past and to redefine what it means to be qualified for the federal bench.

In a statement early Tuesday, Biden announced the nominations of 11 people to serve as federal district or appeals court judges, moving faster than any president in decades to fill open positions in the courts. Aides said they were racing to announce another wave of nominees soon as part of what one called a “steady drumbeat” in the months ahead.

Biden’s nominees — led by Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson for the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit — included three African American women for appeals court vacancies. They also include candidates who, if confirmed by the Senate, would be the first federal district judge who is Muslim, the first Asian American woman to serve on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Circuit and the first woman of color to serve as a federal judge in Maryland, the White House said.

“This trailblazing slate of nominees draws from the very best and brightest minds of the American legal profession,” Biden said.

The Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is a case in point. After the only African American judge serving there stepped aside in 2017, Trump had four chances to make a racially diverse pick for the court. He did not take the opportunity, instead naming four more white judges.

Biden’s first round of judicial picks was an effort to begin addressing such imbalances while the Senate is under Democratic control. Where Trump emphasized white male conservatives, Biden is diversifying not only the ethnic backgrounds of his candidates but their professional ones as well, seeking out nominees with varied legal careers.

“We have a real opportunity to remake what the judiciary looks like and remake it in a way that looks like the country and the lawyers that practice in it,” said Neil Eggleston, who served as former President Barack Obama’s White House counsel from 2014 to 2017 and supports the new approach.

Allies say Biden, a former longtime chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee with a deep background in judicial nominations, is determined to install judges with different sets of experiences from the mainly white corporate law partners and prosecutors who have been tapped for decades by presidents of both parties. Biden has also promised to appoint the first African American woman to the Supreme Court.