Senate confirms Michelle Childs to DC Circuit

WASHINGTON (CN) — Former Supreme Court hopeful J. Michelle Childs was confirmed Tuesday to a seat on the D.C. Circuit, considered the second-most prestigious court in the country.

Childs gained public attention after her name appeared on the shortlist of candidates to replace now-retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, but President Joe Biden instead nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson, who ascended to the court last month.

She was a favorite of Democratic Representative Jim Clyburn, who also serves as House majority whip, and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham to become Biden's high court nominee.

“As you can tell, I was all in on her moving up. It was up to President Biden as to who to nominate to the Supreme Court. But this position that she’s being nominated for is consequential,” Graham said during Childs' confirmation hearing back in April.

The Senate confirmed her to the federal appeals bench by a bipartisan vote of 64-34.

Childs was nominated back in 2010 by then-President Barack Obama to serve as a judge on the U.S. District Court for South Carolina, the state Graham and Clyburn both serve.

She gained prominence in 2020 when, acting as district judge, she granted a preliminary injunction blocking a South Carolina law requiring absentee ballots to be signed by witnesses.

Childs found that although the law had been in effect since 1953, the Covid-19 pandemic created a new context for the mandate, potentially endangering voters simply aiming to cast a ballot.

That ruling was eventually struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, which critiqued the injunction coming in close proximity to the 2020 presidential election.

Before she became a federal judge, Childs spent four years as a state circuit judge in Richland County and for four years prior to that, worked on labor and employment law as a commissioner on the South Carolina Workers' Compensation Commission.

From 2000 to 2002, she was the deputy director of the Division of Labor at the South Carolina Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation.

Childs began her career in private practice, working her way up from associate to partner at the Columbia, South Carolina, law firm of Nexsen Pruet, making her the first Black woman to become a partner at a major law firm in the state.

During her confirmation hearings and consideration for the Supreme Court, supporters lauded both her experience as a Black woman and her blue-collar background, having attended the University of South Florida and University of South Carolina School of Law instead of the Ivy League universities typically seen on a judicial nominee's resume.

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