Biden nominates 5 new court candidates amid Democrats' urgency

Maeve Sheehey
·2 min read

President Joe Biden announced five new candidates for the federal bench on Tuesday, continuing an intense push by Democrats to fill court vacancies while they maintain the majority in the Senate.

Biden’s Tuesday nominees included three to the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut, one to the District Court for the District of Columbia and one to the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Notably, Biden’s circuit court pick, Myrna Pérez, is not a judge — an uncommon, though certainly not unprecedented, move. Pérez is the director of the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights and Elections Program at New York University’s law school and a lecturer-in-law at Columbia Law School.

The Tuesday announcement brings the number of Biden’s announced federal judicial nominees to 24. The White House pointed out that the nominees are diverse in both “personal professional backgrounds,” something Democrats have said excites them about Biden’s court picks so far.

“President Biden has spent decades committed to strengthening the federal bench, which is why he continues to move at an unparalleled speed with respect to judicial nominations,” the White House said in a press release announcing Tuesday’s nominees. “His first judicial nominations announcement was made faster than that of any new President in modern American history, and today’s announcement continues that trend."

This announcement comes as Senate Democrats rush to confirm Biden nominees, spurred by four years of Senate Republicans installing over 220 judges, including three Supreme Court justices, nominated by then-President Donald Trump.

Adding to Democrats’ urgency to fill court vacancies are Monday’s remarks from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who said on conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt’s show that he’d block a Supreme Court nominee from Biden if Republicans regain control of the Senate in 2024. Some in Democratic circles have called on Justice Stephen Breyer, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton and the oldest Supreme Court justice by a decade, to resign now so that his replacement can be nominated by Biden and confirmed by Senate Democrats.