WASHINGTON (CN) — It was light work Thursday for members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, as the panel was mostly united in approving a slate of the Biden administration’s federal court nominees.
The upper chamber’s legal affairs panel, which forms lawmakers’ first line of defense for examining White House judicial picks, met to consider five federal district court nominees and one nominee for the government’s court of federal claims.
Notably, the district court appointees — tapped to fill vacancies on benches in Utah, Nebraska, Texas and Wyoming — all hailed from states with two Republican senators.
Each nominee enjoyed support from both home state senators in the form of blue slips, Judiciary Committee chair Dick Durbin said during opening remarks at Thursday’s business meeting. Durbin thanked the GOP lawmakers for their “bipartisan commitment to fill these vacancies” on their home state courts.
South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, the panel’s Republican ranking member, echoed that sentiment, extending his gratitude to his colleagues for working with the White House to bring nominees to the Senate floor.
Ultimately, the committee voted unanimously to advance Ann Marie McIff Allen, nominated to the District of Utah. Senator Mike Lee, Allen’s Brigham Young University Law School classmate, gave a glowing endorsement of the prospective federal jurist.
Two nominees for the Western District of Texas, Ernest Gonzalez and Leon Schydlower, cleared the panel on votes of 20-1. Missouri Senator Josh Hawley was the only no vote in both polls.
Texas Senator John Cornyn, who announced Thursday that he would run to replace the outgoing Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, urged his colleagues to approve the Texas nominees, pointing out that both Gonzalez and Schydlower had been recommended by the Lone Star State’s own bipartisan judicial evaluation committee.
The Judiciary Committee also voted to advance Kelly Rankin’s nomination to the District of Wyoming by a tally of 20-1. The panel similarly approved the Biden administration’s nominee for the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, Robin Meriweather, on a slightly tighter 18-3 margin.
Carl Tobias, chair of the University of Richmond School of Law, said that Thursday’s hearing was a model for bipartisanship.
“Today’s votes are exactly what should result when the red state home state senators cooperate with the Biden White House to agree on well-qualified mainstream nominees,” he said, adding that the full Senate will likely “easily confirm all of the nominees soon,” because the chamber has only a light backlog of other appointees to consider.
The cross-aisle collaboration on display Thursday is sure to reinforce some lawmakers’ support for the blue-slipping process, a longstanding Senate tradition allowing home state senators to offer formal support for judicial nominees. The practice has often been criticized as a tool of obstruction — opponents argue that lawmakers can use blue slips to hold up the administration’s judicial agenda.
Durbin himself has long supported blue slipping, holding it up as a last vestige of bipartisanship in a deeply divided Congress. The judiciary chair has held fast in those convictions despite growing concerns about the process and has pushed back on concerns about blue slips expressed by some of his colleagues.
Meanwhile, the Senate this week confirmed four nominees for district courts in Florida, bringing the number of judges confirmed under President Biden to 181. With just a few months to go before November’s presidential election, Biden looks to be on track to match or even surpass the 234 Article III judgeships confirmed under former President Trump.
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