A trio of federal judges visited Capitol Hill to advocate for legislation expanding the judiciary, assuming a somewhat unfamiliar role as lawmakers weigh whether to add federal trial court seats for the first time in decades, Bloomberg reported.
The current and former chief judges met with members of Congress and their staff in support of the bill (S. 4199), which would add more than 60 judgeships to understaffed district courts across the US.
Their visits mark the latest effort by federal judges to generate support for the bill, which faces a fast-shrinking congressional calendar to get a floor vote.
“Talking to members of Congress about legislation is a little bit out of our comfort zone,” said Judge Timothy Corrigan, the most recent past chief judge of the US District Court for the Middle District of Florida who attended the trip last week.
However, Corrigan said he felt that, as chief judges, speaking to members of Congress about the legislation would be “in the interest of both the due administration of justice and in helping to provide access to the court.”
Judges can’t discuss politics to maintain independence. However, this legislation is “really a structural issue,” said Chief Judge Troy Nunley of the Eastern District of California, also in attendance.
His six-judge court, with locations in Sacramento and Fresno, had, as of 2023, the highest number of residents per active judge of any federal trial court. Its most recent past chief judge, Kimberly Mueller, urged Congress in 2021 to authorize more judgeships.
“The only thing we can do as judges is simply let Congress know what our situation is,” Nunley said. “That’s all we can do.”
It is “kind of unusual” for judges to travel to the Capitol for a specific issue like this, as opposed to general congressional outreach, said Chief Judge Randy Crane of the Southern District of Texas. He said a judge’s role in talking to lawmakers is to educate members about issues like this bill, rather than advocate for any specific law.
Jeremy Fogel, executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute and a former California federal judge, said judges do sometimes speak directly with lawmakers on issues that affect administration of justice.
“It’s not common, but in this case, in my opinion, is appropriate,” Fogel said of their advocacy. “And I’m not surprised, because this is the farthest that a judgeship bill has gotten in a very long time.”
Judgeship Bill
The legislation, which passed the Senate unanimously in August, would add 63 permanent and three temporary judgeships to federal district courts across 14 states, handed out in tranches through 2035, or to the next three presidential administrations.
Congress hasn’t broadly expanded the courts, which have more than 660 district judgeships, since 1990, and it hasn’t added a single new judgeship in more than two decades. In the meantime, caseloads have ballooned, leaving some benches dwarfed by the size of the districts they cover.
The problem is particularly acute in California’s Eastern District, as well as for courts near the Southwest border, which have seen high levels of immigration-related cases, and in Delaware, a hub for patent and business litigation.
Prior to the presidential election, the bill got broad bipartisan support in both chambers. Under the Senate-passed version, district courts in states with two Democratic senators would receive 37 permanent judgeships, and courts in states with two Republican senators would get 26 permanent judgeships and three temporary seats.
But some House Democrats have begun to waver in their support since President-elect Donald Trump’s victory. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said last week he’d vote against the bill, after previously co-sponsoring a version.
House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) has said he hopes to clear the Senate-passed version soon and “wouldn’t know why” Democrats would be against the legislation.
“They were all for it before,” Jordan said in an interview last week. “The American people deserve it, so they can get justice in a timely fashion. So, I wonder why they wouldn’t be for it.”
All three judges said they met with Republican and Democratic House offices over the course of three days.
Crane said the judges met with Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), the Democratic sponsor of the House bill. He said he also met with members of the Texas delegation, including Rep. Chip Roy (R), who has threatened to vote against the judgeship bill if the courts’ administrative office pursued binding action on judge-shopping. Texas’s district courts became a hub for conservative litigants challenging Biden administration policies, with some filing in the state’s single-judge divisions with the hopes of having certain jurists rule in their favor.
Crane also said they had meetings with staffers for Nadler and for Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas), chair of the Rules Committee.
The House has three weeks left in its legislative calendar before the new Congress comes in Jan. 3 with Republican majorities in both chambers.
“Our parting message is, if not now, when? This is the time to do it,” Corrigan said. “And we’re hopeful that this message will resonate.”
