Nashville lawyer won’t get confirmation vote for appeals court seat

A Nashville lawyer nominated to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will not receive a confirmation vote after U.S. Senate Democrats and Republicans struck a late-night deal on Wednesday.
The deal paves the way for votes on several of President Joe Biden’s nominees for federal trial courts while holding off on four appellate court nominations. This decision leaves those appellate court seats — including a nomination by Biden in May for Nashville plaintiffs’ lawyer Karla Campbell — open for incoming President-elect Donald Trump to fill on the Cincinnati-based appeals court.
A spokesperson for Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer accused Senate Republicans of campaigning to prevent Democrats from fulfilling their plan to confirm as many life-tenured judges as possible before Trump takes office in January.
Senate Republicans previously said they had votes to block at least two of the four appellate court nominees, including Adeel Mangi, who would have become the first Muslim federal appellate judge if confirmed to the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The deal was sure to disappoint progressive advocates who have been pushing Democrats to fill as many judicial vacancies as possible following the Nov. 5 election, which handed the White House to Trump and control of the Senate to Republicans.
“Willingly gifting Donald Trump the chance to appoint judges more committed to political agendas than the rule of law is doing a dangerous disservice to the American people,” Maggie Jo Buchanan, the director of the progressive legal group Demand Justice, said in a statement.
Since the election, the Senate has confirmed eight of Biden’s judge picks, bringing the total number of confirmed judicial nominees to 221. The Democratic-led Senate on Thursday confirmed one more, Sharad Desai, to serve as a trial court judge in Arizona.
Republicans at Trump’s urging had tried to put procedural roadblocks in place to slow down the process and peel away votes in a Senate that Democrats narrowly control 51-49. But several Republican senators have missed votes to confirm judges.
As part of the agreement, the Senate will move forward with votes to confirm seven district court nominees previously advanced by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer after the post-Thanksgiving recess. In return, Democrats agreed to stop pursuing the confirmation of four appellate court nominees.
The Senate will also take up consideration of five other district court nominees whose nominations were advanced on Thursday by the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“The trade was four circuit nominees — all lacking the votes to get confirmed — for more than triple the number of additional judges moving forward,” a spokesperson for Schumer said.
The other appellate nominees were Ryan Park, up for a seat on the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and Julia Lipez, who was nominated to the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.