Biden Pick from Conservative Montana Confirmed to Ninth Circuit

Anthony Johnstone, a Montana law professor and one of President Joe Biden’s few judicial nominees from a conservative-led state, was confirmed to the nation’s largest appeals court.

The Senate confirmed Johnstone, 50, on Monday, 49-45, to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. It’s Biden’s seventh nominee confirmed to the San Francisco-based circuit.

Johnstone, who’s headed for the tribunal’s lone Montana seat, is a former state solicitor, or the state’s top lawyer in court, and most recently a professor at the University of Montana’s Blewett School of Law.

He taught and wrote about federal and state constitutional law, ...