WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Monday vetoed a once bipartisan effort to add 66 federal district judges. He said “hasty action” by the House of Representatives left important questions unanswered about the lifetime positions.
The legislation would have spread the appointment of the new judges to the courts over more than a decade to allow three presidential administrations and six Congresses to appoint the new judges. The bipartisan effort was carefully designed so that lawmakers would not knowingly give an advantage to either political party in shaping the federal judiciary.
The Democratic-controlled Senate unanimously approved the measure in August. But the Republican-led House only brought it up after Republican Donald Trump was reelected to a second term in November, adding a layer of political gamesmanship to the process.
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The White House had said at the time that Biden would veto the bill.
“The House of Representatives’ hasty action fails to resolve key questions in the legislation, especially regarding how the new judges will be assigned, and neither the House of Representatives nor the Senate has fully explored how the work of high-status judges and magistrate judges, the need for new judges,” the president said in a statement.
“The efficient and effective administration of justice requires that these questions of necessity and allocation be further studied and answered before we create permanent judgeships for lifetime-tenured judges,” Biden said.
He said the bill would also have created new judges in states where senators have not filled existing judicial vacancies, and that these efforts “suggest that concerns about legal economics and case volumes are not the true motivating force behind the passage of this bill now.
“That’s why I’m vetoing this bill,” Biden said, essentially dooming the legislation for the current Congress. Overriding Biden’s veto would require a two-thirds majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, and the House vote fell well below that margin.
Organizations representing judges and lawyers had urged Congress to vote in favor of the bill. They argued that the lack of new federal judges had contributed to major delays in the disposition of cases and serious concerns about access to justice.
Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., quickly responded, calling the veto a “misguided decision” and “yet another example of why Americans are counting down the days until President Biden leaves the White House.” He alluded to a full pardon Biden recently granted his son Hunter on federal gun and tax charges.
“The president is more enthusiastic about using his office to provide assistance to his family members who have received due process than he is about providing assistance to the millions of ordinary Americans who have waited years for their due process,” Young said. be ‘forgiveness for me, not righteousness for you.’
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Associated Press writer Kevin Freking contributed to this report.
