Biden Reaches 200-Judge Mark as Time Wanes to Fill Circuit Seats

The Senate confirmed Joe Biden’s 200th judicial nominee, putting Biden slightly ahead of his predecessor’s record at this point in their respective presidencies but still behind the Republican’s pace on appointments to the Supreme Court and appeals courts.

Biden reached the milestone Wednesday with the confirmation of Angela Martinez, a US magistrate judge, to Arizona’s US trial court bench.

Martinez’s confirmation comes as Biden continues to remake the racial, gender and professional makeup of the federal courts. Of the president’s total appointees, 64% are women and 62% are people of color, the White House said in a statement.

Democrats and the heads of progressive groups trumpeted the milestone at a press conference Wednesday outside of the Capitol.

“The bench for too long didn’t look like America, it only looked like a portion of America. Now, we’re expanding to realize that all of America should be on the bench with federal judges that have such power,” Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said.

Biden’s appointments include 155 judges to district courts, 42 to circuit courts, and one Supreme Court justice.

Former President Donald Trump had appointed 196 judges by this point in his presidency, including 141 district judges. But he also had 51 appellate judges and two of his three Supreme Court justices in the books.

Circuit Courts

Trump’s 54 total circuit and three Supreme Court appointees is a record that experts who study judicial nominations say will be tough for Biden to match.

Trump inherited a larger backlog of court vacancies after Republican blockades on Barack Obama’s judicial nominations. And the decision by Senate Democrats in 2013 to reduce the threshold to advance lower court nominees from 60 votes to a simple majority further facilitated the Republican pace on confirmations.

Senate Democrats have moved trial court nominees quicker under Biden compared to other presidencies, due to the 2019 Senate Republican decision to accelerate the confirmation process on the floor. That involved cutting the maximum time between a successful vote on cloture, the procedural step needed to end debate on a nominee, and the start of a confirmation vote from 30 hours to two. This excluded Supreme Court and circuit court picks.

Biden has seven current and future circuit court vacancies he can fill. However, the nomination of Adeel Mangi to the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit’s current New Jersey vacancy remains stalled in the Senate chamber narrowly controlled by Democrats. Several Senate Democrats have said they have concerns about Mangi, who would be the first Muslim to serve on a federal appeals court.

Of the six future circuit vacancies, half have pending nominees. Most of the vacancies are contingent on a successor being appointed.

Russell Wheeler, a Brookings Institution fellow who researches judicial nominations, said it will be hard for Biden to equal Trump’s 54 circuit confirmations by the end of his first term in January.

“I don’t see how,” Wheeler said.

He noted the lengthy timeline to process current and future potential nominees to the seven vacancies available. He also cast doubt on whether enough additional vacancies will appear in time for Biden to act.

Some progressives also have called for Justice Sonia Sotomayor to step down to give Biden a chance to appoint his second justice while Democrats hold the White House and Senate.

Sotomayor raised eyebrows in January when she told an audience at the University of California, Berkeley Law that she’s “tired” and working harder than she expected at almost 70. She’s also been candid about living with Type 1 diabetes.