President Joe Biden on Monday vetoed bipartisan legislation to expand the number of positions on the federal judiciary.
Senators Chris Coons (D., Del.), a close ally of Biden, and Senator Todd Young (R., Ind.) spearheaded the bipartisan legislation to add 66 new judicial slots across the next three presidential terms. The bill was dubbed the “Judicial Understaffing Delays Getting Emergencies Solved Act of 2024” or the “JUDGES Act.”
Biden previously threatened to reject the measure in order to prevent President-elect Donald Trump from having the opportunity to appoint 22 extra judges over the course of his upcoming term, Coons told Politico. Biden said in a statement on Monday that he vetoed the bill because of unresolved questions about how the judgeships would be allocated.
“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,” Biden stated.
The bill passed the Democratic-controlled Senate unanimously over the summer, but Democratic support plummeted after Trump’s win in November. The GOP-controlled House approved the bill earlier this month with 29 Democrats voting for it.
Coons blamed House Republicans for waiting until the election to pass the bill and accused them of bringing partisan politics into the process.
“I am disappointed by this outcome, for my own state and for the federal judges throughout the country struggling under the burden of ever-higher caseloads. I’ve worked on this bill for years, and thanks to tireless bipartisan effort with Senator Young, it made it to the president’s desk. It’s highly unfortunate that it will not become law,” Coons said in a statement.
“The Senate did its part by passing the bill unanimously in August; the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, however, waited for election results before moving the bill forward. As a result, the White House is now vetoing this bill,” Coons added.
Democrats waged a last-second offensive against the legislation once Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris resoundingly this past November.
“Issuing this veto is partisan politics at its worst. The JUDGES Act is a fair bill with strong bipartisan support that would have created 66 judgeships over three presidential terms to address our judicial backlog,” Young said in a statement shared on X.
“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 added, with reference to Biden’s sweeping pardon for his son Hunter.
Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices and hundreds of lower court judges in his first term, dramatically reshaping the federal judiciary and paving the way for significant conservative legal victories. Biden and Senate Democrats recently surpassed Trump’s total number of judicial appointments, the most notable being Supreme Court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.