WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden secured the 235th judicial confirmation of his presidency Friday, an accomplishment that exceeds his predecessor’s total by one after Democrats put extra emphasis on the federal courts following Donald Trump’s far-reaching first term, when he filled three seats on the Supreme Court.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., teed up votes on two California district judges, and they were likely to be the last judicial confirmations this year before Congress adjourns and makes way for a new, Republican-led Senate.
The confirmation of Serena Raquel Murillo to be a district judge for the Central District of California broke Trump’s mark. Come next year, Republicans will look to boost Trump’s already considerable influence on the makeup of the federal judiciary in his second term.
Biden and Senate Democrats placed particular focus on adding women, minorities and public defenders to the judicial rank. About two-thirds of Biden’s appointees are women and a solid majority of appointees are people of color. The most notable appointee was Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first African American woman to serve on the nation’s highest court.
“Prior to our effort, the number of women on the federal bench was really diminished. It was overwhelmingly white males,” said Sen. Dick Durbin, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “We consciously moved forward to bring more women to the bench, and believe me, we had a great talent pool to work with. So I think it’ll enhance the image of the court and its work product to bring these new judges on.”
Biden also placed an emphasis on bringing more civil rights lawyers, public defenders and labor rights lawyers to expand the professional backgrounds of the federal judiciary. More than 45 appointees are public defenders and more than two dozen served as civil rights lawyers.
While Biden did get more district judges confirmed than Trump, he had fewer higher-tier circuit court appointments than Trump — 45 compared to 54 for Trump. And he got one Supreme Court appointment compared with three for Trump. Republicans, much to Democrats’ frustration, filled Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat on the court the week before the 2020 presidential election. Ginsburg had passed away in September.
Democrats also faced the challenge of confirming nominees during two years of a 50-50 Senate. Rarely a week went by in the current Congress when Schumer did not tee up votes on judicial confirmations as liberal groups urged Democrats to show the same kind of urgency on judges that Republicans exhibited under Trump.
Some Senate Republicans were harshly critical of Biden’s choices. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said talk of diversity did not extend to the views of the nominees.
“One of the consequences of the age of Trump is that it drove Democrats insane and it drove them to the extreme left, so they put people on the bench who were selected because they were extreme partisans,” Cruz said.
Liberal-leaning advocacy groups said they are delighted with the number of judges Democrats secured, but even more so with the quality of the nominees. They said diversity in personal and professional backgrounds improves judicial decision-making, helps build public trust and inspires people from all walks of life to pursue legal careers.
“For our federal judiciary to actually deliver equal justice for all, it really has to be for all, and that is one reason why we certainly applaud this administration for prioritizing both professional but also demographic diversity,” said Lena Zwarensteyn, senior director of the fair courts program at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and the next chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Democrats showed newfound resolve on judicial confirmations.
“They learned a lesson from the first Trump administration,” Grassley said. “Paying attention to the number of judges you get and the type of judges you put on the court is worth it.”
Part of the urgency from Democrats came as they watched the nation’s highest court overturn abortion protections, eliminate affirmative action in higher education and weaken the federal government’s ability to protect the environment, public health and workplace safety through regulations. The cases showed that the balance of power in Washington extends to the judicial branch.
Trump will inherit nearly three dozen judicial vacancies, but that number is expected to rise because of Republican-appointed judges who held off on retirement in hopes that a Republican would return to office and pick their replacements.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, acknowledged that the sense of accomplishment for Democrats is muted somewhat knowing that Trump will have another term to continue shaping the federal judiciary.
“I’m not ready to uncork the champagne just because we’ve done some really good work over the last four years,” Blumenthal said. “We need to be prepared to work, hope for the best and try to defeat nominees who are simply unqualified. We have our work cut out for us. The prospects ahead are sobering.”
Grassley promised that he’ll work to best Biden’s number.
“Let me assure you, by January 20th of 2029, Trump will be bragging about getting 240 judges,” Grassley said.
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Senate approves 235th judge of Biden’s term, beating Trump’s tally
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Senate approves 235th judge of Biden’s term, beating Trump’s tally
Danish ‘ghetto’ tenants hope for EU discrimination win
COPENHAGEN: The European Court of Justice is to rule Thursday whether a Danish law requiring authorities to redevelop poor urban “ghettos” with high concentrations of “non-Western immigrants and their descendants” is discriminatory.
The law means that all social housing estates where more than half of residents are “non-Western” — previously defined as “ghettos” by the government — must rebuild, renovate and change the social mix by renting at least 60 percent of the homes at market rates by 2030.
Danish authorities, which have for decades advocated a hard line on immigration, say the law is aimed at eradicating segregation and “parallel societies” in poor neighborhoods that often struggle with crime.
In the Mjolnerparken housing estate in central Copenhagen, long associated with petty crime and delinquency, residents are confident they’ll win the case they’ve brought before the European court.
They argue that using their ethnicity to decide where they can live is discriminatory and illegal.
“100 percent we will win,” insisted Julia, a resident who did not want to tell AFP her last name.
She said the law was solely about “discrimination and racism.”
Muhammad Aslam, head of the social housing complex’s tenants’ association, was more measured, saying he was “full of hope.”
- Long legal battle -
Mjolnerparken residents filed their lawsuit in 2020.
A preliminary opinion by the European Court of Justice’s advocate general in February called the policy “direct discrimination.”
If the court’s final ruling were to be along those lines, “we will be ... completely satisfied,” Aslam said.
The 58-year-old owner of a transport company who hails originally from Pakistan, he has lived in the estate since it was created in 1987.
He and his wife raised four children in their four-room apartment, children who are now a lawyer, an engineer, a psychologist and a social worker, he said proudly.
“I who am self-employed as well as my children are all included in the negative statistics used to label our neighborhood a ‘ghetto’, a parallel society,” he fumed, referring to official data on the number of non-Western residents.
In Mjolnerparken, the landlord took advantage of a renovation of the four apartment blocks, decided by residents in 2015, to speed up the transformation of the complex and comply with the new legislation.
All of the residents — a total of 1,493 in 2020 — had to be temporarily relocated so the apartments could be refurbished, a representative of the tenants’ association, Majken Felle, told AFP.
At the time, eight out of 10 people in Mjolnerparken were deemed “non-Western,” with people from non-EU countries in the Balkans and Eastern Europe also falling into that category.
- ‘Disadvantaged ethnic group’ -
In order to avoid moving from one temporary apartment to another during the lengthy renovations, many residents agreed to just move to another neighborhood.
And those who are determined to return — like Felle, the Aslams and Julia — are at the landlord’s mercy.
“We were supposed to be temporarily relocated for four months, and now it’s been more than three years. Each year, they give us four or five different dates” for when the work will be completed, Aslam sighed.
In total, 295 of Mjolnerparken’s 560 homes have been replaced, with two apartment blocks sold and replaced by market-rate rentals out of reach for social housing tenants.
Experts say some 11,000 people across Denmark will have to leave their apartments and find new housing elsewhere by 2030.
“The effort to diversify neighborhoods might indeed be well intended. Nevertheless, such diversification cannot be achieved by placing an already disadvantaged ethnic group in a less favorable position,” the advocate general said in February.
“However, in the present situation, the Danish legislation does precisely that.”
Even if the court does not rule in residents’ favor on Thursday, the legal case could still continue in Denmark, Felle said.
But it would be a serious setback.
“That would mean that Denmark had carte blanche to adopt as many discriminatory laws as it wants,” said Lamies Nassri of the Center for Muslims’ Rights in Denmark.
“It affects the whole country when there are discriminatory laws, especially Muslim citizens who have been particularly marginalized and stereotyped.”
The law means that all social housing estates where more than half of residents are “non-Western” — previously defined as “ghettos” by the government — must rebuild, renovate and change the social mix by renting at least 60 percent of the homes at market rates by 2030.
Danish authorities, which have for decades advocated a hard line on immigration, say the law is aimed at eradicating segregation and “parallel societies” in poor neighborhoods that often struggle with crime.
In the Mjolnerparken housing estate in central Copenhagen, long associated with petty crime and delinquency, residents are confident they’ll win the case they’ve brought before the European court.
They argue that using their ethnicity to decide where they can live is discriminatory and illegal.
“100 percent we will win,” insisted Julia, a resident who did not want to tell AFP her last name.
She said the law was solely about “discrimination and racism.”
Muhammad Aslam, head of the social housing complex’s tenants’ association, was more measured, saying he was “full of hope.”
- Long legal battle -
Mjolnerparken residents filed their lawsuit in 2020.
A preliminary opinion by the European Court of Justice’s advocate general in February called the policy “direct discrimination.”
If the court’s final ruling were to be along those lines, “we will be ... completely satisfied,” Aslam said.
The 58-year-old owner of a transport company who hails originally from Pakistan, he has lived in the estate since it was created in 1987.
He and his wife raised four children in their four-room apartment, children who are now a lawyer, an engineer, a psychologist and a social worker, he said proudly.
“I who am self-employed as well as my children are all included in the negative statistics used to label our neighborhood a ‘ghetto’, a parallel society,” he fumed, referring to official data on the number of non-Western residents.
In Mjolnerparken, the landlord took advantage of a renovation of the four apartment blocks, decided by residents in 2015, to speed up the transformation of the complex and comply with the new legislation.
All of the residents — a total of 1,493 in 2020 — had to be temporarily relocated so the apartments could be refurbished, a representative of the tenants’ association, Majken Felle, told AFP.
At the time, eight out of 10 people in Mjolnerparken were deemed “non-Western,” with people from non-EU countries in the Balkans and Eastern Europe also falling into that category.
- ‘Disadvantaged ethnic group’ -
In order to avoid moving from one temporary apartment to another during the lengthy renovations, many residents agreed to just move to another neighborhood.
And those who are determined to return — like Felle, the Aslams and Julia — are at the landlord’s mercy.
“We were supposed to be temporarily relocated for four months, and now it’s been more than three years. Each year, they give us four or five different dates” for when the work will be completed, Aslam sighed.
In total, 295 of Mjolnerparken’s 560 homes have been replaced, with two apartment blocks sold and replaced by market-rate rentals out of reach for social housing tenants.
Experts say some 11,000 people across Denmark will have to leave their apartments and find new housing elsewhere by 2030.
“The effort to diversify neighborhoods might indeed be well intended. Nevertheless, such diversification cannot be achieved by placing an already disadvantaged ethnic group in a less favorable position,” the advocate general said in February.
“However, in the present situation, the Danish legislation does precisely that.”
Even if the court does not rule in residents’ favor on Thursday, the legal case could still continue in Denmark, Felle said.
But it would be a serious setback.
“That would mean that Denmark had carte blanche to adopt as many discriminatory laws as it wants,” said Lamies Nassri of the Center for Muslims’ Rights in Denmark.
“It affects the whole country when there are discriminatory laws, especially Muslim citizens who have been particularly marginalized and stereotyped.”
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