Bipartisan House Members Urge Biden to Rethink Judge Bill Veto

Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Lou Correa (D-Calif.) have urged President Joe Biden to reconsider his threat to veto recently passed legislation that would add judges to overburdened courts for the first time in decades.

The JUDGES Act (S. 4199), which would add 66 federal district judgeships across the US, “represents a critical, bipartisan effort to address the increasing demands on our federal courts and ensure timely justice for all Americans,” the lawmakers wrote in a Dec. 12 letter to Biden, obtained by Bloomberg Law on Wednesday.

The bill’s bipartisan showing in the House, where it attracted the support of 29 Democrats and all but two Republicans, also “underscores the pressing need to fortify our judiciary to meet the challenges of our growing caseloads,” they wrote.

“Addressing the needs of our judiciary is not a partisan issue but a national imperative,” Issa and Correa wrote.

Issa, chair of the House Judiciary Committee’s panel on courts and intellectual property, led the introduction of the counterpart bill in the House.

The judgeship legislation cleared the House earlier this month by a vote of 236-173. It passed the Senate unanimously in August.

The bill would add 63 permanent and three temporary trial court judgeships, staggered over the next decade, on more than a dozen courts identified by the judiciary as needing reinforcements. It would represent the first broad expansion of the federal judiciary since 1990.

Hundreds of federal judges publicly voiced support for the bill and warned failure to pass it would result in litigation delays at courts whose workloads had outgrown the size of the bench.

However, ahead of the House vote, the White House issued a statement indicating Biden planned to veto the measure if it came to his desk, saying it was “unnecessary to the efficient and effective administration of justice.”

The veto threat came after the once-bipartisan measure lost the support of Democratic leadership once Donald Trump won the election. Democrats accused House Republicans of deliberately waiting until after the election to move on the legislation, once they knew their preferred candidate would get to fill the first batch of judicial appointments created by the bill.

Both Issa and Correa said in interviews they’ve heard from federal judges about their courts’ need for more judgeships.

Correa said he recently heard from Chief Judge Dolly Gee of the US District Court for the Central District of California, who told him her court was “desperate” for reinforcements.

Issa called on Biden—who sponsored that 1990 court expansion bill when he was a Delaware senator—to “please wait” and give the bill more thought.

“The president will either have a legacy of doing something for the right reason for the federal court, or he will have a legacy of having vetoed something that he clearly would have signed had it come to his desk a month earlier,” Issa said.