President Joe Biden vetoed a bipartisan bill that would have created 63 permanent federal judgeships to account for an increased population and caseload. If Biden had signed the Judges Act, President-elect Donald Trump would have been able to fill 22 of the new positions.
The legislation passed the Senate unanimously and passed the House 236-173.
Biden said in a statement that the legislation was passed “hastily”.
“The House of Representative’s hurried action fails to resolve key questions in the legislation, especially regarding how the new judgeships are allocated, and neither the House of Representatives nor the Senate explored fully how the work of senior status judges and magistrate judges affects the need for new judgeships,” Biden said.
When Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., learned Biden planned to veto the bill, he offered this rebuke.
“It’s hard to imagine a justification for blocking the JUDGES Act that doesn’t smack of naked partisanship,” McConnell said. “It’s almost inconceivable that a lame-duck president could consider vetoing such an obviously prudential step for any reason other than selfish spite.”
The number of federal judgeships has not expanded significantly in 35 years. Since that time the U.S. population has increased by about 100 million people, with federal case filings rising by 40%. The bipartisan sponsors of the bill said the increase has led to delays and overburdened judges.
The bill would have added 10 or 11 new seats every odd numbered year from 2025 to 2035. The new positions were targeted to the busiest regions by spreading out the judgeships across 13 states.
“(The bill) would create new judgeships in States where Senators have sought to hold open existing judicial vacancies,” Biden said. “Those efforts to hold open vacancies suggest that concerns about judicial economy and caseload are not the true motivating force behind passage of this bill now.”
If the bill was signed into law, Trump would have been able to appoint 11 additional judges in 2025 and 11 more in 2027. Those 22 seats span the country; there are six in California, four in Texas and three in Florida. The rest are dispersed in smaller states.
