Women Are Improving the Federal Bench: Milestones and Historic Firsts
(a list of some of the appointments is at the link at the bottom)
Women Are Improving the Federal Bench: Milestones and Historic Firsts
8/25/2023 by The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
Phenomenal women are improving the federal bench. We’re pushing for more.
In October 2021, voting rights expert Myrna Pérez became the first civil rights lawyer to be confirmed to a federal appellate court during the Biden administration. For 15 years, she worked to defend the freedom to vote and safeguard our democracy at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. A daughter of Mexican immigrants, Pérez became the only Latina serving on the Second Circuit and the first Latina to serve on the court since the elevation of Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
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Since 2021, the Senate has confirmed 140 lifetime judges. Two-thirds (94) are women, and more than 40 percent (60) are women of color, including Native American women. At the circuit court level, three-fourths of these confirmed judges are women, and more than half are women of color. This stands in stark contrast to former President Trump’s appointees, including his nomination of zero Black judges—and just one Latina judge—to federal circuit courts. Trump appointed five white judges to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit after Senate Republicans blocked President Obama’s nomination of Myra Selby—a Black woman. These actions re-segregated the Seventh Circuit, which remained all-white until Biden’s historic appointment of former public defender Judge Candace Jackson-Akiwumi.
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Importantly, half of President Biden’s confirmed circuit court judges are women who have experience as a civil rights lawyer or public defender (or both), including the first Black woman and first former public defender on the U.S. Supreme Court—Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson—who was confirmed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit before her historic ascension to our nation’s highest court. And at the district court level, notable civil rights lawyers like Margaret Strickland, Lauren King, Tana Lin, Jia Cobb, Sarah Geraghty, Charlotte Sweeney, Nina Morrison, Nancy Maldonado, Araceli Martínez-Olguín, Jessica Clarke, Nusrat Choudhury, Natasha Merle and Tiffany Cartwright are now lifetime judges on courts across the nation. Eighteen women nominated by President Biden who are now serving on federal district courts also have experience as public defenders, including many of the aforementioned civil rights lawyers as well as Elizabeth Hanes, Kelley Hodge, Mia Perez, Kai Scott, Adrienne Nelson and Margaret Guzman, among others.
The professional and demographic diversity these judges bring to our federal courts matters. Our diverse nation needs judges who reflect and represent all of us. And we know this: Demographic and professional diversity on our courts has been shown to increase public trust in the judiciary and improve judicial decision-making. More diverse courts include the perspectives of communities who have been traditionally excluded from seats of power in the judiciary’s formal and informal decision-making, and judges from different demographic and legal backgrounds infuse more viewpoints into judges’ deliberations. Diverse courts help communities trust that judicial decisions are fair and do not favor a select few like the wealthy and powerful.
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This was originally published on the LCCR blog, under the headline “Phenomenal Women Are Improving the Federal Bench. We’re Pushing for More.”
https://msmagazine.com/2023/08/25/women-are-improving-the-federal-bench-milestones-and-historic-firsts/