WASHINGTON (CN) - The Senate confirmed President Donald Trump's choice to replace Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch on the 10th Circuit on Thursday, and went on to also confirm his nominee for the Third Circuit.
They were the fourth and fifth of Trump's judicial nominees to be confirmed by the Senate. Meanwhile, the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday morning unanimously approved two new U.S. attorneys.
The Senate confirmed Colorado Supreme Court Justice Allison Eid to the 10th Circuit with a 56-41 vote exactly one week after the Senate Judiciary Committee recommended her approval on a narrow party-line vote.
"Justice Eid is clearly well-qualified for the position to which she has been nominated," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said before the vote Thursday. "She is just the kind of fair-minded judge people would want hearing their case."
Eid has served on the Colorado Supreme Court since 2006 following a stint as the state's solicitor general from 2005 to 2006. With sterling conservative legal credentials that include clerking for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Eid was on Trump's short list for the Supreme Court seat that went to Gorsuch.
Eid has been a member of the conservative Federalist Society since 1988, a legal advocacy group that has taken on a prominent role in Trump's court picks. Eid has some history of small political donations to Republicans, though her most recent donation was $250 to House of Representatives candidate Greg Walcher in 2004.
Eid told Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., in written responses to questions submitted after he nomination hearing that she did not know why the Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation decided to recommend her for the Supreme Court short list. She said she did not have any conversations with either group about either her inclusion on the list or the 10th Circuit nomination.
Born in Seattle in 1965, Eid worked as an intern in the White House's communications office for a year during the Reagan administration and eventually worked as a speechwriter for former Secretary of Education William Bennett.
Eid was appointed to the Colorado Supreme Court in 2006 by Republican Gov. Bill Owens and retained her seat with 74 percent of the vote in the 2008 election. Trump nominated her to the 10th Circuit in June and she appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee for a nomination hearing in September.
Democrats spent most of that hearing launching attacks very similar to those they mounted against Gorsuch earlier this year, attempting to portray Eid as a conservative with a record of ruling against individuals in favor of business interests. For her part, Eid insisted she would only "follow the law where it takes me."
"You take an oath to be impartial, you have to be impartial," Eid told the Senate Judiciary Committee at her September nomination hearing. "That is a requirement."
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., prodded Eid over a dissent she wrote in the 2015 case Westin Operator LLC v. Groh, in which Eid found the parents of a woman who was kicked out of a hotel with a group of friends for being drunk and disorderly could not sue the hotel after she suffered brain damage in a car accident while driving home. When Durbin brought up the case during the hearing, Eid defended her decision, noting the women walked by taxis on their way to the car.