House Passes Judiciary Expansion Bill Amid Biden Veto Threat

On Thursday, the House of Representatives passed a bipartisan bill that seeks to expand the federal judiciary by creating dozens of new judgeships. This comes despite a veto threat from President Joe Biden, who issued a statement on Tuesday calling the expansion “unnecessary for the administration of justice.”
The legislation, known as the Judicial Understaffing Delays Getting Emergencies Solved (JUDGES) Act, previously passed the Senate by unanimous consent in August, aims to add 66 new district court judgeships, a request that originated from the federal judiciary itself to address existing judicial bottlenecks. 

This would mark the first major increase in judgeships since 1990, aiming to streamline the judicial process, which has faced backlogs in several courts across the nation. The legislation aims to add new judges gradually over a decade to courthouses across 13 states, thus staggering the new judgeships over three presidential administrations. This approach was strategically designed to mitigate the concerns of legislators about the potential for a president from an opposing party to fill these new vacancies with like-minded judges.

Despite unanimous support in the Senate, the political temperature changed dramatically with the victory of President-elect Donald Trump, adding a layer of controversy to what was initially considered a nonpartisan and uncontroversial bill. The House vote on Thursday was 236-173, with 29 Democrats crossing party lines to support the measure. 

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) addressed the shift in Democratic support, saying:

At that time, Democrats supported the bill — they thought Kamala Harris would win the presidency. Now, with the Biden-Harris Administration’s veto threat, Democrats have whipped against this bill, standing in the way of progress, simply because of partisan politics.

Read Biden’s full statement:

The Administration opposes S. 4199, the Judicial Understaffing Delays Getting EmergenciesSolved (JUDGES) Act. While judicial staffing is important to the rule of law, S. 4199 is unnecessary to the efficient and effective administration of justice. The bill would create new judgeships in states where Senators have sought to hold open existing judicial vacancies. Those efforts to hold open vacancies suggest that concerns about the judicial economy and caseload are not the true motivating force behind the passage of this bill now.

In addition, neither the House nor the Senate fully explored how the work of senior status judges and magistrate judges affects the need for new judgeships. Further, the Senate passed this bill inAugust, but the House refused to take it up until after the election. Hastily adding judges with just a few weeks left in the 118th Congress would fail to resolve key questions in the legislation, especially regarding how the judges are allocated. 

If the President were presented with S. 4199, he would veto it.

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This is just the most recent example of how hyper-partisanship creates a dysfunctional government. As we see the focus shift from effective governance to jockeying for legacy, Biden is sacrificing the nation’s need for a functional and responsive judicial system at the altar of political posturing. Let the anticipated veto serve as a reminder that the president’s priority should be serving the public good, not creating a personal legacy.  Or, as some might say, it’s time to put America First.