With Breyer’s retirement, Clyburn says SC Judge Michelle Childs is Supreme Court ready

The third-ranking Democrat in the United States House and close ally to President Joe Biden says South Carolina’s U.S. District Court Judge Michelle Childs is ready for the U.S. Supreme Court.

Biden will have his first chance as president to name someone to the Supreme Court after news broke Wednesday that Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, 83, is retiring. Biden pledged to nominate a Black woman to the high court — a serious pledge that was pushed by House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, D-Columbia, ahead of Biden’s eventual win of the state’s Democratic presidential primary.

“I think that she would be a tremendous addition to the Supreme Court,” Clyburn told The State on Wednesday of Childs, 55.

Biden in December nominated Childs to fill a vacancy on the prestigious and highly influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, often referred to as the D.C. Circuit — a federal bench often used as a booster to the Supreme Court.

Clyburn said Childs’ hearing is scheduled for Feb. 1.

If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, she would succeed Judge David Tatel.

“I would hope that hearing on Feb. 1 will give the whole country the chance to look at who she is,” Clyburn said. “And I hope everybody would look at her resume.”

Other names in consideration include U.S. Circuit Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson and California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger and prominent civil rights lawyer Sherrilyn Ifill, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.

“I appreciate Justice Breyer’s service to our nation. He has always been a scholar and a gentleman whose record on the Supreme Court is solidly in the liberal camp,” U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said in a statement Wednesday. “As to his replacement: If all Democrats hang together — which I expect they will — they have the power to replace Justice Breyer in 2022 without one Republican vote in support. Elections have consequences, and that is most evident when it comes to fulfilling vacancies on the Supreme Court.”

A University of South Carolina School of Law graduate, Childs is a former state judge at partner at a large law firm.

She holds a degree from Duke University School of Law, an undergraduate degree from the University of Florida and two degrees from the University of South Carolina School of Law and School of Business.

Colleagues described Childs last year in a profile as a judge with “30 years of experiences dealing with real clients, real plaintiffs, real trial lawyers and complex business, legal and other court dilemmas.

She would be able to look at matters through a lens of humanity as well as the law’s cold black-letter prisms.”

This story will be updated.