Sunday, May 19, 2024

President Biden's Impact Tenth Circuit of the Federal Judiciary

 In a word, overall negligible.  At the Appellate level, President Biden had two picks.  He replace a woman with a man and a man with a woman on a court with only 33% female Judges.  Missed opportunity.  The same court had two minorities when he arrived, and at the end of his first term, there is just one.

The Tenth Circuit is really a rather quiet place.  You don't hear a lot in the way of ground breaking legal cases, nor do you think of it as home to particularly reactionary Justices on any side of Constitutional law.  However, we should also remember that Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch came to the bench from a seat on the Colorado District Court of the Tenth Circuit.  

At the District level, the impact of Biden's appointments is a lot of horse trading.  Where one district's gender parity or racial diversity grows, another's wanes.  Ergo, where the percentage of women increased significantly in Colorado and Utah; they fell back in New Mexico, Wyoming and Kansas.  The presence of non-white Judges made gains in New Mexico and Northern Oklahoma, the ratio declined in Colorado and Kansas.  And in the end, writ large, the status quo remains.  

Now, I would like to point out that within this mundane milieu there are some remarkable and noteworthy firsts.  The first East Asian judges were appointed in Colorado, Justices Wang and Rodriguez.  The first openly Lesbian Justice was also appointed in Colorado, Justice Sweeney.  In Northern Oklahoma, Justice Hill becomes the first Native American (Cherokee) Judge in the history of the Circuit.  

Do you know how many Native American Judges there are in the Federal Judicial Systems Article III courts?  Five.  All are women. The first, Justice Humetewa (Hopi) was appointed by President Obama to a seat on the Arizona District Court.  The second, Justice Brown (Choctaw) was appointed by President Trump to a seat on the Northern Texas District Court.  And then the remaining three all appointees of President Biden: Justice King (Muscogee - Creek) has a seat on the Western Washington District Court; Justice Sykes (Navajo) has a seat on the Central California District Court, and Justice Hill
(Cherokee) who sits on the Northern Oklahoma District Court.  Where are the Native American men?  








No comments:

Post a Comment