Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, seen at an April 2022 White House event celebrating her Senate confirmation, was President Joe Biden’s sole U.S. Supreme Court nominee. The 235 federal judges confirmed during Biden’s presidency set records for racial and gender diversity. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s number of lifetime appointments to the federal bench surpassed the first Trump administration’s Friday and set records as the most diverse selection of judges by any president in U.S. history, according to federal judiciary observers.

The U.S. Senate, late in its final session of the year, confirmed what are expected to be the final two of Biden’s nominations, bringing his total number of judicial confirmations to 235, just one more than President-elect Donald Trump’s first-term total.

Senators voted along party lines to confirm Benjamin J. Cheeks to be U.S. district judge for the Southern District of California, in a vote of 49-47, and Serena Raquel Murillo to be U.S. district Judge for the Central District of California, in the same vote breakdown.

Cheeks marks the 63rd Senate-confirmed Black judge appointed by Biden, and Murillo the 150th woman.

Four senators did not vote, including Vice President-elect J.D. Vance of Ohio, Trump’s secretary of State nominee, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, newly sworn Sen. Adam Schiff of California, and the outgoing Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

Senate control will be in Republican hands after the new Congress is sworn in Jan. 3, almost certainly shutting the door on any Biden nominations before Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration.

Among Biden’s appointments, 187 were seated on district courts, 45 on federal appeals courts, and one, Ketanji Brown Jackson, on the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as two to the Court of International Trade.

Biden issued a statement Friday night marking the “major milestone.”

“When I ran for President, I promised to build a bench that looks like America and reflects the promise of our nation. And I’m proud I kept my commitment to bolstering confidence in judicial decision-making and outcomes,” Biden said.

“I am proud of the legacy I will leave with our nation’s judges,” Biden said, closing out his statement.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer touted the “historic” accomplishment on the Senate floor following the vote.

“We’ve confirmed more judges than under the Trump administration, more judges than any administration in this century, more judges than any administration going back decades. One out of every four active judges on the bench has been appointed by this majority,” Schumer said.

He and members of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary delivered a press conference immediately after.

Historic racial and gender diversity

Observers who monitor the demographics and professional backgrounds represented on the federal bench celebrated the “remarkable and historic progress” made under Biden, according to a Friday memo from The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

Biden set records for appointing the most women and more Black, Native American, Latino and Latina, Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander judges than during any other presidency of any length, according to the organization’s analysis.

The Senate confirmed 15 Black judges to the federal appeals courts during Biden’s term, 13 of them women. Only eight Black women had ever served at this level of the federal judiciary, according to the analysis.

On the district court level, Biden appointed the first lifetime judges of color to four districts that had only ever been represented by white judges. They include districts in Louisiana, New York, Rhode Island and Virginia.

Biden also appointed, and the Senate confirmed, 12 openly LGBTQ judges, three of them women; the first four Muslim judges ever to reach the federal bench; and two judges currently living with disabilities.

“Our federal court system has historically failed to live up to its promise of equal justice under the law,” the Leadership Conference’s Friday memo stated. “For far too long, our judges have disproportionately been white, cisgender, heterosexual men who have possessed very narrow legal experiences as corporate attorneys or government prosecutors. Judges decide cases that impact all of our rights and freedoms, and it is vital that our judges come from more varied backgrounds both personally and professionally.”

Nearly 100 of Biden’s appointments previously worked as civil rights lawyers or public defenders, according to the leadership conference, including Jackson who was the first former public defender elevated to the Supreme Court.

Biden’s confirmed judges stood in contrast to Trump’s picks who, the American Constitution Society noted, lacked gender and racial diversity.

According to data published by the Pew Research Center at the close of Trump’s first term, the now president-elect was more likely than previous Republican presidents to nominate women but still lagged behind recent Democratic administrations.

Pew also found that Trump had appointed fewer non-white federal judges than other recent presidents.

Blocked nominee faults Islamophobia

But not everyone praised the Senate’s advice-and-consent role in evaluating federal nominees. Adeel Mangi, the first Muslim American to be nominated for the appeals court level, criticized Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee for asking Islamophobic questions.

In a letter to Biden, published by the New York Times and other outlets, Mangi slammed the process as “fundamentally broken” and questioned the reasoning behind three Democratic senators who joined Republicans in opposing him.

“This is no longer a system for evaluating fitness for judicial office. It is now a channel for the raising of money based on performative McCarthyism before video cameras, and for the dissemination of dark-money-funded attacks that especially target minorities,” wrote Mangi, of New Jersey, whom Biden nominated for a position on the Philadelphia-based Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

Other blocked nominations included Julia M. Lipez of Maine, nominated for the First Circuit, Karla M. Campbell of Tennessee for the Sixth Circuit, and Ryan Young Park of North Carolina for the Fourth Circuit. 

Rice-Eccles Stadium on the University of Utah campus in Salt Lake City is pictured on Monday, Jan. 15, 2024. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)

WASHINGTON —  A GOP measure barring accrediting organizations from requiring colleges and universities to adopt diversity, equity and inclusion policies as a condition of accreditation passed the U.S. House Thursday, though its fate appears dim.

The End Woke Higher Education Act — which succeeded 213-201 — marks one of several so-called anti-woke initiatives and messaging bills from Republican lawmakers to hit the House floor this week.

The higher education measure, which drew fierce opposition from the Biden administration and major associations of colleges and universities, came amid a looming government shutdown deadline and in the heat of the 2024 campaign.

Four House Democrats voted in favor of the GOP measure, including Reps. Don Davis of North Carolina, Jared Golden of Maine, Mary Peltola of Alaska and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington.

Baked into the legislation are two bills introduced by Republican members of the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce — the Accreditation for College Excellence Act and the Respecting the First Amendment on Campus Act.

Utah Rep. Burgess Owens, chairman of the Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development, introduced the Accreditation for College Excellence Act in May 2023, while New York Rep. Brandon Williams brought forth the Respecting the First Amendment on Campus Act in March.

In a statement to States Newsroom, Owens said “House Republicans passed the End Woke Higher Education Act to stand up for academic freedom, defend students’ constitutional rights, and ensure that colleges and universities aren’t forced to bend the knee to activist accreditors pushing political agendas as a condition for federal funding.”

The Utah Republican said the “Biden-Harris administration has injected its far-left ideology — Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and Critical Race Theory — into every part of American life, including our higher education system.”

Owens’ bill says accreditation standards must not require, encourage or coerce institutions to support or oppose “a specific partisan, political, or ideological viewpoint or belief” or “set of viewpoints or beliefs on social, cultural, or political issues” or support “the disparate treatment of any individual or group of individuals.”

Meanwhile, Williams’ Respecting the First Amendment on Campus Act forces schools to disclose policies regarding free speech to students and faculty as a condition of receiving any Title IV funds.

Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965 includes federal student financial aid programs.

Strong opposition 

But the legislation is highly unlikely to be passed in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

The Biden administration also strongly opposed the measure, saying in a statement this week that the legislation would “micromanage both public and private institutions, undermining their ability to recognize and promote diversity.”

The legislation “would go beyond Congress’s traditional role in higher education with a wide range of confusing and unprecedented new mandates,” the administration added.

Rep. Bobby Scott — ranking member of the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce — called the measure a “baseless attempt to inject culture wars into an ever-important accreditation process” during the floor debate Thursday.

The Virginia Democrat said the legislation “attempts to circumvent the First Amendment to establish a whole new scheme to regulate speech and association rights on campus outside of established precedents and practices.”

The GOP measure also drew the ire of leading associations of colleges and universities, who opposed the legislation both individually and collectively.
In a joint letter this week to House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, six major associations led by the American Council on Education took aim at Williams’ portion of the legislation, saying it “would undermine efforts to protect free speech on campus and provide safe learning environments free from discrimination.”