Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, speaks after being nominated for the US Supreme Court at the White House in Washington, DC, on February 25, 2022.
As President Joe Biden makes a final push to confirm judicial nominees before his term in office ends, he is on track to have appointed more federal judges of color than any president before him.
On Monday, the Senate confirmed Biden’s judicial nominee for the Northern District of Georgia, Tiffany Johnson, making her the 40th Black woman he has appointed to lifetime federal judgeships — more than any president in a single term.
Overall, about 60% of Biden’s 233 appointees are people of color, according to figures the White House shared with NBC News. Benjamin Cheeks and Serena Raquel Murillo, two more nominees for U.S. district judge, await Senate confirmation after the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced their nominations Thursday. If Cheeks is approved, Biden will have appointed 63 Black federal judges, the most of a presidency of any length, according to the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
White House communications director Ben LaBolt said in an emailed statement that Biden is “proud to have strengthened the judiciary by making it more representative of the country as a whole and that legacy will have an impact for decades to come.”
“Even before taking office, President Biden signaled to the Senate that he wanted to make sure that people who had been historically excluded from our judiciary” are included, said Lena Zwarensteyn, senior director of the fair courts program and an adviser at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
“The research shows that when you have more judges that have different perspectives because they’ve worked on different types of issues or they come from different communities, it improves the decision-making and it certainly improves the trust that communities might have in these institutions. So making sure we have fair-minded judges at all levels is really important.”
Politics
Barack Obama appointed 26 Black women lifetime judges during his two terms, and Donald Trump appointed two Black women judges to the federal bench in his first term.
Jimmy Carter appointed 37 Black lifetime judges in his one term. Both Obama and Bill Clinton each appointed 62 Black judges over the course of their two terms. If Cheeks is confirmed, Biden would beat their record by one, according to the Leadership Conference.
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These numbers include multiracial judges and account for those appointed to multiple courts under the same president.
Senate Democrats vowed to confirm as many Biden nominees as possible before Trump takes office in January and Republicans take control of the Senate. They’ve confirmed dozens since Election Day, but these circuit nominees are in limbo amid some opposition from Democrats as well as GOP senators.
In November, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., wrote in a post on X that, “This Senate will keep working to confirm more of President Biden’s excellent judicial nominees.”
In an interview, Marge Baker, executive vice president at People For the American Way, a national progressive organization focused on combating far-right extremism, said it was crucial that the remaining nominees be confirmed.
“As pleased as we are with the quality and quantity of nominees that have been confirmed so far, these circuit court nominees are also really, really important,” Baker said. The four circuit judges in limbo are Adeel Abdullah Mangi of New Jersey, nominated for the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals; Julia M. Lipez of Maine, 1st Circuit; Karla M. Campbell of Tennessee, 6th Circuit; and Ryan Young Park of North Carolina, 4th Circuit.
“These courts make decisions that affect the lives of hundreds of millions of people,” Baker added. “They decide questions about voting rights, about consumer rights, about workers’ rights, about antitrust laws, about climate change, about abortion. There’s just a whole range of issues where these courts of appeals are often the final deciders on.”
Biden has long made it his goal while in office to reshape the overwhelmingly white and male federal judiciary by appointing judges from various professional and demographic backgrounds. He’s managed to do that, confirming record numbers of former public defenders, civil rights lawyers or lawyers representing workers. More than half his appointees have been women, according to the White House, and his appointments include several LGBTQ judges and judges from several racial and ethnic minority groups.
Biden made history by appointing Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman on the U.S. Supreme Court. Dozens of his appointments account for various “firsts.”
“Biden has been a leader in terms of appointing Black judges,” said Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, president of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a Washington-based think tank. “The great thing about this is that these appointments will have long-term impacts, at least in terms of representation. This is showing the public that the inclusion of Black judges should be natural, regular.”
Now, experts say the stakes are high as these appointments can affect court decisions during Trump’s second term.
Elliot Mincberg, a Supreme Court expert and counsel for the People For the American Way, said Biden-appointed judges have “had an enormous impact on improving justice for Americans all across the country.”
Zwarensteyn called it “a tremendous and often not-discussed part” of Biden’s legacy.
“He’s really taken it to what I would say is the next level in terms of administrations who have done this.”
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