Biden Vetoes Legislation Creating 66 New Federal Judgeships (1)

President Joe Biden vetoed legislation Monday that would have expanded US trial courts for the first time in decades, despite pleas by federal judges that their courts are short staffed.

The legislation (S. 4199), known as the JUDGES Act, would have added 66 federal trial court judgeships in courts across the US, in stages over the next decade.

But the once-bipartisan legislation lost the support of Democratic leaders after Donald Trump won the presidential election, meaning he would receive the first batch of judgeships.

Though the Senate passed the bill in August, the Republican-controlled House didn’t act on it until after the election. House Democrats accused their colleagues of abandoning a deal to pass the bill before the first recipient of the new judgeships was known.

Biden, in a statement released Monday night, blamed the House’s “hurried action” on the legislation, which he said “seeks to hastily add judgeships with just a few weeks left in the 118th Congress.”

The White House had already signaled Biden intended to veto the legislation.

Judge Robert J. Conrad, Jr., director of the Administrative Office of the US Courts, criticized Biden’s veto in a statement Tuesday as a “deviation from the long historical pattern of approving judgeship bills that awarded new judgeships to sitting Presidents.” He also took issue with the president’s claims that the bill was put together too quickly and didn’t consider the contributions of semi-retired judges and others.

“It is not a bill that was hastily put together.,” Conrad said. “Rather it is the product of careful and detailed analysis which considers primarily the weighted caseload per active judge in each judicial district, while also factoring in the contribution of senior judges, magistrate judges and visiting judges.”

It’s also “contrary to the actions of Senator Biden who helped pass many of those bills,” Conrad said. Biden had introduced the Senate version of the last enacted judgeship legislation in 1990.

The House cleared the Senate-passed bill earlier this month by a vote of 236-173, with the support of nearly all Republicans and more than two dozen Democrats.

After the passage, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who sponsored the House bill, and Rep. Lou Correa (D-Calif.), wrote Biden urging him to rethink his veto plans.

Chief judges of courts identified by the judiciary as needing more reinforcements described the veto threat as “devastating” and “distressing.” Congress hasn’t broadly added judgeships since 1990, and hasn’t added any in more than two decades.

The inaction has left a number of federal trial courts without enough judges for their districts and the caseloads they handle.

The Sacramento-based US District Court for the Eastern District of California has one of the highest populations per active judgeships in the US, with just six active judges for roughly 1.4 million people.

Courts near the Southwest border, which have seen high levels of immigration-related cases, and in Delaware, a hub for patent and business litigation, have also seen rising caseloads.

Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.), who introduced the bill in the Senate, said in a statement that the Monday veto is “partisan politics at its worst.”