President Donald Trump recently nominated law professor Jennifer Mascott to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Even though Mascott is currently a White House attorney and teaches at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., she will likely be based in Delaware. Democrats will complain that this is somehow inappropriate because Mascott doesn’t currently live in Delaware, but this is a red herring. It’s not unprecedented for a judicial nominee to be nominated to serve in a different state. The complaints from Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., should be dismissed as out of hand because he ignored such complaints under President Biden.

Seats on the U.S. Courts of Appeals are linked to a given state by custom. While federal statute requires each state to have at least one circuit judge, beyond that, it varies. In fact, Delaware is overrepresented in the Third Circuit, so those complaining about Mascott should be thankful the seat wasn’t moved to New Jersey.

Mascott is currently based in the D.C. area, but moving states for court seats is not without precedent. Some of the most well-regarded circuit judges were appointed to seats where they had minimal or no professional connections, such as the late Judge Robert Katzmann on the Second Circuit (N.Y.) and now-Justice Neil Gorsuch (Colo.). Judge Katzmann had the enthusiastic support of freshman Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. 

In fact, the Biden administration provides a particularly strong precedent for Mascott. Biden appointed Judge Julie Rikelman to the First Circuit in Boston even though she had minimal professional connections to Massachusetts. At the time of her nomination, she was at the Center for Reproductive Rights in New York City. Before that, she was at NBC Universal and the law firm Simpson, Thatcher & Bartlett — also in New York. 

Rikelman somehow spent more time as an attorney in Alaska than in the state where she was a judge. Her Senate questionnaire was sure to note the various Massachusetts internships she had while a student at Harvard, though. These internships and her semester as a “Standardized Test Instructor” in Boston were apparently enough for the Massachusetts senators to support Rikelman. 

Perhaps the most important Biden precedent is Ryan Park — the failed nominee to the Fourth Circuit in North Carolina. While Park was the incumbent Solicitor General of North Carolina when nominated, his time in that attorney general’s office seems to have been his only sustained exposure to the state. 

While Rikelman had argued and lost the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization abortion case at the Supreme Court, Park had argued and lost the companion case to Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. Park was best characterized as a D.C. lawyer. 

In part because of Park’s sparse connections to North Carolina, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., opposed him. He also claimed Park was a “patently partisan” nominee. Tillis waged a systematic campaign against Park’s nomination, apparently calling in chits from non-Republican allies like then-Sens. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., and Joe Manchin, I-W.Va., to sink the nomination. 

One possible cross-party ally who never materialized, though, was Coons. No matter how Tillis implored his Democrat colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee to support his prerogatives and reject Park, the entreaties fell on deaf ears — including Coons’. 

Importantly, at the time, Coons surely knew about this vacancy in Delaware. Judge Kent Jordan had announced his planned 2025 retirement in May 2024, two months before Park was nominated. If Coons had wanted Republican help later in ensuring a Delaware nominee to his liking, he should have backed Tillis as he opposed Park in North Carolina. Coons did no such thing. In fact, he provided the necessary vote to report Park to the Senate floor. Even though Park’s nomination died in the Senate before a full floor vote, Tillis warned that he would remember how Democrats voted.

All that is to say, Senate Republicans should ignore Coons’ complaints against the White House. When the shoe was on the other foot last Congress, Coons proved such concerns with state and location appointment didn’t matter to him. To quote Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.: Coons will regret his vote for Park — and he may regret it a lot sooner than he thinks.