By Nate Raymond
(Reuters) – Democratic U.S. President Joe Biden secured his 235th appointment to the federal judiciary on Friday, narrowly surpassing President-elect Donald Trump’s first-term tally by one with a record number of women and people of color named to the bench.
The Democratic-led U.S. Senate voted to confirm two of Biden’s nominees to serve as life-tenured federal trial court judges in California, capping off a four-year effort by the White House to reshape a federal judiciary that shifted ideologically to the right during the first presidential term of Trump, a Republican.
Biden now ranks No. 2 in history for the most judicial appointments in a single four-year term, beating the 234 Trump named. Democratic former President Jimmy Carter holds the one-term record with 262 judges appointed.
“It is historic,” Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor. “It sets a record.”
Biden surpassed Trump’s first-term record despite inheriting fewer than half as many vacancies to fill when he took office as Trump. But Biden appointed fewer appeals court judges than Trump and only one U.S. Supreme Court justice compared with Trump’s three.
Trump is expected to have the chance to appoint more than 100 judges over four years when his second term begins Jan. 20.
About two-thirds of Biden’s appointees are women, and about the same proportion are Black, Hispanic or other racial minorities, in keeping with a campaign pledge he made to diversify a bench that has long been largely white and male.
“When I ran for president, I promised to build a bench that looks like America and reflects the promise of our nation,” Biden said in a statement. “And I’m proud I kept my commitment to bolstering confidence in judicial decision-making and outcomes.”
He also pushed to diversify the professional backgrounds of a judiciary long dominated by former prosecutors and one-time law firm partners. The White House said Biden appointed more than 45 public defenders to the bench and more than 25 civil rights lawyers to serve as judges.
The latest confirmed nominees included Serena Murillo, a state court judge in Los Angeles who became the 150th woman confirmed to a judgeship under Biden, with the Senate voting 49-47 in favor of her serving in the Central District of California.
That is a record number of women judges appointed by one president, according to the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, an advocacy group that backed many of Biden’s nominees. Democratic former President Barack Obama had the prior record with 138 confirmed over his eight years in office.
The Senate also voted 49-47 in favor of elevating San Diego-based U.S. Magistrate Judge Benjamin Cheeks to a lifetime position as a district court judge in the Southern District of California.
With Cheeks’ confirmation, 63 Black federal jurists have been confirmed under Biden, a record tally for a president that includes the nation’s first Black woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
She is now part of the three-member liberal minority on the Supreme Court, which swung to a 6-3 conservative majority after Trump’s appointments of Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
Biden also named fewer judges to the 13 appeals courts that sit below the Supreme Court, which have the final say on the bulk of cases. Biden named 45 while Trump appointed 54, 19 of whom filled seats once held by Democratic-appointed judges.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi, Richard Chang and Leslie Adler)
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