judicial nominees

July 19, 2022 - For weeks, reproductive rights advocates pressured President Biden not to go through with his plan to nominate an anti-abortion lawyer to a Kentucky judgeship. Biden backed down last week, citing a GOP senator's objection and a Senate tradition with Jim Crow roots.

July 1, 2021 - The president has nominated a record number of people of color to federal courts, but his choice to fill a vacancy on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears cases from the Carolinas, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia, is a white man.  

June 15, 2021 - Federal appellate courts in the Deep South are disproportionately white compared to the region's population, but President Joe Biden has pledged to diversify the courts with his nominations. Efforts to expand the region's mostly white state appellate courts could also lead to more diversity on the bench.

October 22, 2020 - As millions of voters cast ballots this month, federal courts in the South shot down attempts to make voting easier during the pandemic, and some relied on a novel argument giving them more power to overrule state courts. The rulings have led to calls to expand the Supreme Court and lower courts if Democrats take the White House and Senate. 

July 15, 2019 - Across the South, voting rights advocates argue that judicial elections violate the Voting Rights Act by depriving communities of color of representation on state courts. Federal courts are hearing lawsuits in Arkansas and Alabama, where the state supreme courts are all white.