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 (article available here).
The latest confirmation means he will leave office having secured one Supreme Court justice, 45 appeals court judges, 187 district court judges and two judges on the U.S. 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.
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.
Nearly 100 of Biden’s appointments previously worked as civil rights lawyers or public defenders.
Biden also 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.
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.
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 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.