Trailblazer for Hispanics in Judiciary Heads to 7th Circuit (2)

Nancy Maldonado, a former labor and civil rights attorney who became a trial court judge, was confirmed as the first Hispanic member of the federal appeals court based in Chicago.

The Democratic-led Senate voted 47 to 43 on Monday to confirm Maldonado to the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

Maldonado flips a seat held by a Republican appointee to one filled by a Democratic president, Joe Biden. She’ll succeed Ilana Rovner, the first women to serve on the Seventh Circuit who was named by George H.W. Bush and announced plans in January to take senior status, or semi-retirement.

Her confirmation tracks Biden’s commitment reshape federal courts with more racially and professionally diverse judges. Maldonado, 48, has served on the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois since 2022, where she was its first Hispanic female judge.

Born in the Chicago suburb of Skokie to parents who migrated from Puerto Rico, Maldonado’s father came to the mainland with a fourth-grade education and worked in a Utah copper mine before settling in Chicago where he started his own food business, she said at her district court confirmation hearing.

The Columbia Law School graduate clerked for then-Judge Rubén Castillo in the court where she currently sits before joining Barnhill & Galland, where she became a partner in 2010.

Maldonado specialized in employment discrimination and other civil rights cases in a career “steeped in defending and protecting the rights of working people,” including migrant farm workers, the Leadership Conference said in a letter supporting her district court nomination.

Maldonado was questioned by Republicans about her courtroom productivity at her Seventh Circuit confirmation hearing in March.

Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and John Kennedy (R-La.) raised concerns about the number of pending civil cases she had before her last year and why she hadn’t moved them faster.

Maldonado said she doesn’t rush cases and that she’d dealt with a pandemic-related backlog on the district court.

Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), at the time, defended Maldonado’s record and said she hadn’t been reversed by a reviewing court.

Maldonado received the highest rating of Well Qualified from the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary.