WASHINGTON — The House of Representatives on Thursday passed a bipartisan bill backed by the federal judiciary that would create dozens of new judges despite President Joe Biden’s promise to veto it.
The legislation has already passed the Senate with bipartisan support and was considered uncontroversial — until President-elect Donald Trump won the election last month.
House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark, of Massachusetts, sent a letter before Thursday’s vote urging colleagues to vote against the bill.
“While this bill seeks to address our backlogged justice system, House Democrats must continue to look clearly at what authorizing a significant number of new, empty judgeships means under a future Trump administration,” she wrote.
The bill passed the House of Representatives on a 236-173 vote on Thursday, with 29 Democrats voting in favor and two Republicans voting against. It was passed unanimously by the Senate in August.
“At the time, Democrats supported the bill — they thought Kamala Harris would win the presidency,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said in a statement. “Now, however, the Biden-Harris administration has chosen to issue a veto threat and Democrats have opposed this bill and stood in the way of progress simply because of partisan politics.”
The bill would add 66 new district courts, as requested by the federal judiciary itself, to ease bottlenecks in the justice system.
Although Democrats have complained that the bill will give Trump more judgeships to fill, the new judgeships would be staggered over time, meaning he would have the chance to appoint only 25 of the 66.
The bill was specifically designed to be nonpartisan and would be the first major expansion of the judgeship since 1990.
Biden threatened to veto the legislation on Tuesday, with the White House saying it was “unnecessary to the efficient and effective administration of justice.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
