President Biden's Impact on the DC & Federal Circuit Courts

 We finish with two somewhat enigmatic Circuits.  The Circuit of the District of Columbia, which is similar to all of the other Circuits in that it has two levels: The District and the Appellate.  It only serves Federal issues that occur in the sovereign territory of the District of Columbia.  It is considered one of the most important Circuits because it is credited for birthing more Supreme Court Justices than any other in contemporary times.  It also hears cases like that current insurrection case against former President Trump.

The Federal Circuit is only an Appeals Court without a geo- graphic based--in that the court only hears cases without a specific geographic component.  It is also the newest of the Federal Circuits having been created in 1982.  The Federal Appeals Court hears cases involving copyright and patents, trademark, civilian contracts with Federal entities, veterans' claims, U.S. Postal Services, and international trade disputes among others.  Some are tied to specific laws and agencies like "The Little Tucker Act," "The Economic Stabilization Act," "The Emergency Petroleum Allocation Act," "The Energy Policy and Conservation Act," and "The Natural Gas Policy Act."  This is what legal nerd heaven looks like...

President Biden's Impact on the Eleventh Circuit Federal Judiciary

 So we come to the final "numbered" circuit.  There are two more, by the way; the District of Columbia Circuit and the Federal Circuit.  The latter is a court with jurisdiction over specific non-geographic concerns like copyright law.  Beyond the 13 Circuit Courts there are a handful of others like: The United States Court of International Trade, the United States Court of Federal Claims, the Unites States Tax Court, and the United States Appeals Court for the Armed Services.  But wait!  There's more...  The president is also responsible to nominate, and the Senate to confirm, all the judges on the local courts of the District of Columbia.  Whew.

But, for now, let's just look at the Eleventh.  Split off of the 5th in 1981, it covers the states of Alabama, Georgia  and Florida.  Before Biden came into office it was the only Appeals court with gender parity, 6 men and 6 women.  And when he leaves office it will still have gender parity with two new judges of his choosing.  Until this year, as vacancies began to mount, the two Republican Senators from Florida refused to play ball; however, beginning in November of this year, they began to sign off of nominees.  The two Senators in Alabama will let hell freeze over before either of them who lift a pinky in the matter, and the two Senators in Georgia are both Democrats, so replacing judges in those courts has not been an issue.

The Eleventh Circuit's racial and ethnic Demographics skew well outside of the demographic make up of the Circuit's courts with one exception:  17.7% of the population of the three states is Black, and 17.7% of the judges across the circuit are also Black.  Now, it's not an equitable distribution and there are no judges of color in any of the District Courts of Alabama.

Given the relatively small number of Districts with openings and the lower impact of adding judges to Districts with  large numbers of judges, it would be fair to say that President Biden's impact on the Eleventh Circuit has been modest.

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?  

President Biden's Impact on the Ninth Circuit of the Federal Judiciary

 The Ninth is to Liberal's what the Fifth is to Conser- vatives, though much larger and by that fact alone, more diverse.  Where you could argue that among the members of the 5th there isn't a blue or even purple state in the trio.  You could say that about the 9th were reliably red Idaho, Alaska and Montana join purple Nevada and Arizona to create some internal discord.  The Ninth is also the largest of the circuits with 13 Districts serving 9 states and 2 additional Article IV courts serving two territories.  So, it's not surprising that it also has by far the largest Appeals Court with 29 seats!  Compared to the first Circuit's 6 seats, or the average of 12 seats, it's a circuit without comparison.  

I, for one, would love to see it broken into two with the creation of the 12th Circuit as the new home to Hawaii, California, Arizona and Nevada, leaving the smaller 9th to encompass Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana, along with the territories of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.  It's been done before.  In 1981, when it was determined that the 5th Circuit had outgrown it's britches, the Congress broke off Georgia, Alabama and Florida from Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi and created the Eleventh District for the eastern half, letting the western half remain the 5th.  

As to President Biden's impact on the 9th, I would dare to say that it's the largest of any of the circuits along side of the First and Second Circuits as the top three.  One reason for this was the large number of unfilled seats:  5 out of 7 in Western Washington, 2 out of 6 in Eastern California, 6 out of 28 in Central California, 4 out of 13 in Southern California, and 2 out of 5 in Nevada; 19 in total.  Combine this with a good share of sitting judges seeking Senior Status, and you have a Circuit where President Biden has Nominated and his Senate Judiciary Lead Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois have shepherded in 57 new Judges!  

Of these 41 are women, and 39 are minorities.  One of his most noteworthy accomplishments in the area of diversity comes with the 1 Article III Federal District Court, fully seated, without a single White Male Jurist.  Article IV Territorial Courts, crossed this threshold under President Obama.  We're talking Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands (which were the last), Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.  And this wasn't done with a 2 judge District like Idaho, Eastern Oklahoma, Western Wisconsin, North Dakota or Vermont, or even one of the 11 3-seat Districts.  This was accomplished with the District of Western Washington home to 7-seats, whose judges include 1 Hispanic man, 1 Asian woman, 1 Native American woman, 1 Black man, 1 Asian Man and 2 White woman.  This is the promise of what "a more perfect union" looks like.  One where power is shared.

Before President Biden the Ninth Circuit had 1 District with majority female judges and 2 with gender parity.  Now, (included the Appeals Court) 5 have majority female judges and 6 have parity!  That's flip from 3 out of 14 to 11 out of 14, or if you add in both of the Territorial Courts; 5 out of 16 to 13 out of 16.  Across the entire Circuit, the Ninth is now just 1 female judge away from total gender parity.  President Biden has three opportunities within the District to hit this mark before his first term ends.  Fingers crossed.

When it comes to Diversity, the overall stats are amazing.  In the particulars there are winners and losers wherein the losers don't generally lose that much and the winners make long awaiting gains.  Clearly, the aforementioned District of Western Washington is a winner, but so are Districts like Oregon, Eastern, Northern, Central and Southern California.  The Districts of Central and Southern California represent the greatest winners.  

President Biden's Impact on the Eighth Federal Circuit Judiciary

 Ah, the lonely, Eighth.  Rising northward from the northern extremes of the grand Mississippi lowlands it doesn't stop until it gets the great river's head waters in Minnesota and includes the northern half of the Great Plains.  At one point reliably Blue, that role now falls solely to Minnesota.  With the rest of the states led by a range of all white and mostly male Republican Senators you might expect a lot of reticence to cooperate with Biden administration in choosing judges to fill vacant seats, and this is were you would be mostly mistaken.  The first Republican led state to approve a Biden nominee was Iowa, and since both South Dakota and Nebraska have come on board.  

The two largest states in circuit are a study of opposites: Missouri (pop 6,178,000) and Minnesota (pop 5,717,000).  The former represented in the Senate by two male Maga-Republicans including noted Insurrectionist supporter Joshua Hawley, while Minnesota's Senators are both Democratic women.  With just 461,000 difference in population, both states have 8 member House of Representative delegations; however, Minnesota can manage with just 7 Federal Judges while Missouri needs 16!  Is Missouri more than twice as lawless as Minnesota?  Extrapolating further to another state in the 8th Circuit, Arkansas.  With a comparative population of 3,046,000, it is home to 8 Federal Judges.  Over twice as many per capita as Minnesota.  Is Minnesota really that much safer?  Don't ask George Floyd's family, or is this just one of innumerable examples of the systemic racism present in the Federal Judiciary?  Because one thing that Missouri and Arkansas have that Minnesota doesn't is a whole more Black people.  Think about it, kittens.  Just think about it.

So what are the claims to demographic fame that the 8th circuit can make?  The least number of women by percentage.  The least number of non-white judges by percentage.  The Appellate Division with the greatest percentage of men (91%), of white Judges (91%) and of Republican appointed Judges (91%)

With so few open seats the raw number of women judges out of the 55 total seats in the circuit actually dropped from 13 to 12, in spite of Biden nominating 3 women to seats in South Dakota, Nebraska, and Minnesota.  

By attrition only the percentage of women rose by 0.08%... 

Biden introduced the first two Hispanic Judges to the Circuit

President Biden's Impact on the Seventh Federal Circuit Judiciary

 The Seventh Circuit is home to the third largest District in the Federal Court System of Northern Illinois with 23 seats, after Southern New York (New York City) and Central California (Los Angeles-Riverside-San Bernadino) with 28 seats each.  Not surprisingly, former President Obama's footprint through the judiciary is still strong in All three Illinois-based Districts, as well as, Western Wisconsin with both seats are held by his appointees.  Former President Trump made some appointments, but out of deference to his longtime colleague and friend, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, Senator McConnell allowed non-Federalist Society candidates to be nominated and confirmed at the District level.  With the benevolence of the Republican Senators from Indiana, there have been modest but important gains in both gender and diversity in this circuit.

A ten percentage point gain of women on the Appeals Court is only eclipsed by the Diversity stats.  From ZERO non-white judges to 36%.  In the District of Northern Illinois the number of non-white justices went from 9 put 22 to 12 out of 23.  The District of Northern Indiana becomes the first District in the Seventh Circuit to become majority female, while both Central and Southern Illinois maintained gender parity.

President Biden's Impact on the Sixth Circuit Federal Judiciary

 The Sixth Circuit Stars in Michigan and moves south through Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee.  When President Biden was elected in 2020 this meant by way of Senatorial seats Michigan (blue), Ohio (purple), Kentucky and Tennessee (red), with Tennessee a crazier shade of red thanks to Senator Blackburn.  As purple goes, Senator Portman of Ohio was a reasonable man.  The results have been no nominations for either Kentucky nor Tennessee and in Ohio with the replacement of Senator Portman with Senator Vance--crazy like a Blackburn, Ohio was off the table after 2023, too.  

The long and short of it, both in Gender parity and Racial/Ethnic diversity, the Sixth District has been a wash.  There were 26 female judges when President Biden took the oath of office and there will be 26 female judges when his first term ends.  Racial diversity has increased slightly, but at the cost of Racial diversity.  The 13 Black Judges have shrunk to 11, but now this 1 Hispanic Judge (Northern Ohio) and 1 East Asian Judge (Eastern Michigan).  

There is one open seats on the Appeals the Court that has yet to have a nominee presented.  The seat is in the Middle District in Nashville.  I have a favorite candidate, who lives in Memphis and so the question would be would she bifurcate her life or move her family to Nashville.  In any event, I hope they choose a qualified woman who is also Non-White.

The yellow represents South Asian

The orange represents Hispanic

The green Eastern Asian

The pink Middle Eastern

President Biden's Impact on the Fifth Circuit Federal Judiciary

 The Fifth Circuit has a reputation as a very conservative circuit.  Encompassing Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana, the region wasn't always conservative, nor is it uniformly conservative today; however, President Trump was able to appoint some very conservative judges, members of the Federalist Society.  Arguably, the most conservative activist Jurist in the country is Judge Mark Kasmaryk seated in Northern Texas. 

By the middle of the third year of the Biden administration open seats in four of the Districts: Eastern Louisiana, Western Louisiana, Southern Texas and Western Texas had reached the point that the work of the Districts was under stress.  It was at this time that the Senators from Texas and Louisiana came to agree on three candidates each.  It did not fill the entirety of open seats, but the confirmation of these judges (all men), did release some of the pressure.  

Additionally, in the second year of the Biden Administration a candidate was nominated with the initial blessing of the two Senators from Mississippi for an open seat in the Northern District of Mississippi.  After the fact, Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith discovered that the nominee believed that Trans people were human beings who deserved all the same rights and protections afforded by the Constitution that she had, and she rescinded her blue card killing the nomination.

The majority of changes represented in the charts is due to attrition and open seats.  It speaks to the fact that Conservatives understand if you don't move, you move backward.