Republican complains about lack of straight, white, male judges

A Republican congressman has slammed President Joe Biden for not appointing more straight, white men to the House Courts, saying it’s ‘almost impossible’ for those people to serve as judges under the Biden administration .

“In his first two years, President Biden appointed 97 federal judges. Of the 97 federal judges, I expected 25 or 30 to be white because I know President Biden was in no rush to appoint more white people,” Rep. Glenn Grothman said. said Thursday.

“Five of the 97 justices were white men. Two of them were gay,” the Wisconsin Republican continued. “So almost impossible for white people, not gay, to be named here.”

Newsweek contacted Grothman via email for comment.

Who did Biden appoint as judge?

Newsweek was unable to verify which judges Grothman was referring to. According to judicial watchdog Balls and Strikes, 129 of Biden’s judicial nominations have been confirmed by the Senate.

Biden has appointed more judges to federal courts than both former presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama. He not only surpassed his predecessors in the number of judges, but also surpassed them in the number of women and people of color he has appointed since taking office.

Balls and Strikes data shows that 65.2% of Biden’s appointees to the federal bench are women and 66.5% are people of color. By comparison, 24% and 42%, respectively, of Trump and Obama appointees were women, and 16% and 36% were people of color.

Even as a presidential candidate, Biden has pledged to diversify the federal bench.

During his 2020 campaign, the Democrat pledged to “appoint United States Supreme Court justices and federal justices who look like America” ​​- a promise that was at the forefront of his SCOTUS pick , Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. Upon her confirmation in April 2022, Jackson became the first black woman and the first former federal public defender on the bench.

However, Biden’s efforts to appoint more women and people of color to the federal bench still come up against the current roster, which leans heavily toward white men.

The most recent report from the American Bar Association (ABA) found that only 4% of federal judges were black women, while 78% were white men. The numbers represented the 68 justices Biden had appointed as of July 1, 2022, and do not include the 29 he has since appointed. Of those 29, two are white men.

The ABA noted that while there are more white male lawyers, one in five lawyers is a person of color and more than a third are women. The association also pointed out that while the court system is becoming more diverse, not all federal courts are alike.

“For example, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals has 18 judges, but only one is a woman,” the report said. “Tennessee has 23 federal trial judges, but only three are women. Sixteen states have no federal trial judges of color. There are 104 federal trial judges in those states.”

Newsweek contacted the White House for comment.