WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Monday vetoed a once-bipartisan effort to add 66 federal district judgeships, saying “hurried action” by the House left important questions unanswered about the life-tenured positions.
The legislation would have spread the establishment of the new trial court judgeships over more than a decade to give three presidential administrations and six Congresses the chance 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 passed the measure unanimously in August. But the Republican-led House brought it to the floor only after Republican Donald Trump was reelected to a second term in November, adding the veneer of political gamesmanship to the process.
The White House had said at the time that Biden would veto the bill.
“The House of Representative’s hurried action fails to resolve key questions in the legislation, especially regarding how the new judgeships are allocated, and neither the House of Representatives nor the Senate explored fully how the work of senior status judges and magistrate judges affects the need for new judgeships,” the president said in a statement.
“The efficient and effective administration of justice requires that these questions about need and allocation be further studied and answered before we create permanent judgeships for life-tenured judges,” Biden said.
He said the bill would also have created new judgeships in states where senators have not filled existing judicial vacancies and that those efforts “suggest that concerns about judicial economy and caseload are not the true motivating force behind passage of this bill now.
“Therefore, I am vetoing this bill,” Biden said, essentially dooming the legislation for the current Congress. Overturning Biden’s veto would require a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate, and the House vote fell well short of that margin.
Organizations representing judges and attorneys had urged Congress to vote for the bill. They argued that the lack of new federal judgeships had contributed to profound delays in the resolution of cases and serious concerns about access to justice.
Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., reacted swiftly, calling the veto a “misguided decision” and “another example of why Americans are counting down the days until President Biden leaves the White House.” He alluded to a full pardon that Biden recently granted his son Hunter on federal gun and tax charges.
“The President is more enthusiastic about using his office to provide relief to his family members who received due process than he is about giving relief to the millions of regular Americans who are waiting years for their due process,” Young said. “Biden’s legacy will be ‘pardons for me, no justice for thee.’”
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Associated Press writer Kevin Freking contributed to this report.