Joe Biden has appointed a more diverse cohort of judges than any of his predecessors

By a vote of 54-45, the Senate on Tuesday confirmed Gina Méndez-Miró to the U.S. District Court for the District of Puerto Rico. With that vote, 100 of President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees have been approved, outpacing the number of former President Donald Trump’s nominees to the bench that had been confirmed at a similar point in his presidency.

Biden’s picks are more diverse by race and gender than those of any of his predecessors.

Two years into his presidency, Trump had 85 judges confirmed; he did not reach the century mark in judicial confirmations until his third year in office, in May 2019.

Trump installed ideologically conservative federal judges whose rulings have limited the government’s ability to impose health regulations, expand voting rights, and protect LGBTQ rights.

Most notably, Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch, the three Supreme Court justices nominated by Trump, were all members of the conservative majority that voted 6-3 to overturn Roe v. Wade and the constitutional right to an abortion in their Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision.

The other justices voting against abortion rights, Samuel Alito, John Roberts, and Clarence Thomas, were nominated by Presidents George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush. The three dissenting justices, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan, were nominated by Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

The overwhelming majority of Trump judicial nominees confirmed by the Senate were white and male.

Biden’s nominees have included Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, whose nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court fulfilled a Biden campaign promise to nominate the first Black woman to the court. Jackson was confirmed over the opposition of 47 Republican senators on April 7, 2022.

Méndez-Miró is a member of the Hispanic National Bar Association and the International Association of LGBTQ+ Judges and will be the first openly LGBTQ person to sit on the court in Puerto Rico. On Monday, the Senate voted to confirm Cindy Chung to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, making her the first Asian American to sit on the court, located in Philadelphia.

According to data from the Federal Judicial Center, Biden has nominated and has had confirmed to judicial positions 47 women of color, more than any other president except Obama, counting the confirmations of both of Obama’s two terms in office.

In December 2022, Biden broke the record as the president who had had the largest number of Black women confirmed to the federal appellate court, with 11 successful nominations. In the 245 years of the United States’ existence before Biden took office, only eight Black women had been confirmed to the court.

With the results of the 2022 midterm elections, Democrats increased their power in the Senate with Sen. John Fetterman’s win in Pennsylvania and Sen. Raphael Warnock’s reelection in Georgia in 2022, keeping the party in control of the judicial nomination process.

In a speech on the floor of the Senate on Dec. 12, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer emphasized the importance of approving Biden’s nominations.

“You can be sure that judges will remain a top priority in the Congress to come,” Schumer said. “More judges means a more balanced judiciary, and a more balanced judiciary will mean greater trust in our courts in the long run, so important for our country at this moment in time, because the MAGA Supreme Court and so many of these other MAGA judges have caused people to lose faith in the courts.”

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.