Eric Schulte – Nominee to the U.S. District Court for the District of South Dakota

After a long negotiation process, former South Dakota Bar President Eric Schulte has been named as one of two nominees to the U.S. District Court in South Dakota.

Background

Schulte has a long history in South Dakota, getting a B.A. from the University of South Dakota in 1994 and a J.D. from the University of South Dakota School of Law in 1999 before clerking on the South Dakota Second Judicial Circuit in Sioux Falls. Schulte then joined Davenport, Evans, Hurwitz & Smith, where he still practices as a Partner.

History of the Seat

Schulte has been nominated to replace Judge Karen Schreier, who will take senior status upon confirmation of a successor.

Legal Experience

Schulte has spent his entire legal career at Davenport, Evans, Hurwitz & Smith, where he works on commercial, insurance, and construction litigation. In addition, Schulte has served as a board member for East River Legal Services, working on providing legal assistance to low income individuals.

Among his notable cases, Schulte represented Blue Cloud Abbey, a defendant in a suit brought by seventy-two former students of St. Paul’s School, who alleged mental, physical, and sexual abuse while they were students there. See Zephier v. Catholic Diocese of Sioux Falls, 752 N.W.2d 658 (S.D. 2008). After the district court dismissed all claims under the statute of limitations, the South Dakota Supreme Court reversed, finding that most of the defendants had alleged timely claims against the defendants. See id. at 23.

Political Activity

Schulte has an extensive donation history, with the vast majority of his donations going to Democrats in North and South Dakota. Schulte has also donated to a few Republicans, most notably, South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley.

Overall Assessment

With the District of South Dakota desperately in need of additional judges, Schulte’s nomination cannot come fast enough for the judges on the court. As with similar packages negotiated in Indiana and Oklahoma, it is likely that Schulte will be confirmed comfortably.

82 Comments

    • Zack's avatar

      I’m happy with both of these nominees.
      Schulte sounds like a solid nominee and we’re lucky to have him.
      As to Theeler, as I’ve said (as have a couple of others) having a uber liberal judge doesn’t matter in certain seats to me simply because they will be overturned on appeal more often then not.
      She doesn’t appear to be a flame throwing Federalist Society member so for this seat, I’m okay with her.

      Like

  3. Mitch's avatar

    Schuelte will be confirmed if the confirmation hearing goes well. He’s never been a judge or a prosecutor. However, he’s an experienced civil litigator and he was once President of the South Dakota state Bar. Seems like a nominee who very few will object to.

    Liked by 1 person

  4. Zack's avatar

    I will say this on Mangi’s nomination.
    Schumer needs to do a headcount now and see if the votes will be there now or in the future.
    If not, then it’s time to tell him to withdraw and nominate someone like Jeremy Feigenbaum.
    If Bradley Garcia can get nominated and confirmed to the DC Circuit, Feigenbaum can be on the 3rd Circuit.

    Liked by 1 person

  5. Zack's avatar

    Honestly, the more I look into him, the more I don’t get why Feigenbaum wasn’t the nominee.
    You don’t get the position he got at that age by being a pushover or not having knowledge of the law.
    Also, in addition to being Jewish, he’s also gay and as a member of the LGBT community, it would be nice to have another gay male on a Circuit court, especially since unlike Patrick Bumatay, he wouldn’t be a far right hack.
    That’s just me of course.
    But I digress, Schumer needs to see if the votes are there now for Mangi or if they ever will be and if they aren’t, to withdraw the nomination.
    It sucks that it may have to come down to cold hard politics but filling the seat matters more then one person does.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Dequan's avatar

      I’m ok with Mangi being nominated over Jeremy Feigenbaum because Mangi is a phenomenal pick with a long progressive pro bono portfolio. And Mangi is in his 40’s so he is still young enough to be considered for the SCOTUS for quite some time. And of course it’s nice to see the first Muslim circuit court judge in history.

      What I’m not ok with is the reason Feigenbaum is not the nominee is because he’s 35. Republicans have absolutely no hesitation nominating 35 year old nominees (Or younger) so that should have zero effect on this administration taking somebody off the list. And looking at who was considered after Jeremy Feigenbaum was taken off the list makes me want Mangi confirmed even more now as all of them would be worse options than either Mangi or Feigenbaum.

      Like

  6. Dequan's avatar

    @Ethan has tried several times to post but it’s not going through. I will post on his behalf…

    He was nominated for Karen Schreier’s seat and the other South Dakota nominee (Camela Theeler) was nominated for Jeffrey Viken’s seat. Schreier is based in Sioux Falls while Viken was based in Rapid City. Schulte and Theeler are both from Sioux Falls. I wonder if one of them will move to Rapid City, as the two cities are almost 5 hours apart. Someone else on the blog expected that if one of them were to move it, it would be Schulte since Theeler’s husband is an executive of a Sioux Falls based bank.

    Liked by 1 person

  7. Zack's avatar

    I did a little research and the main courthouse is stationed in Sioux Falls so it’s not required for them to have someone stationed in Rapid City though it would make things a whole lot easier if someone was.
    Similar thing is going on in Nebraska right now with Susan M. Bazis.
    She is nominated for a seat by a judge who was stationed in Lincoln, NE while she’s serving in Omaha so one wonders if she would have to move as well.
    From what I can tell, it varies from district to district.
    I know when Anne Traum replaced Clive Jones, she moved to Reno even though most of her legal ties and career were spent in Las Vegas.
    Very likely we’ll be seeing something similar with Schulte and Bazis.
    Time will tell I guess.

    Liked by 1 person

  8. Gavi's avatar

    5 days!
    Is this the quickest turn around from nomination (announcement or senate submission) to a new nominee write up on this blog? I supposed Harsh had a lot of runway since Schulte’s candidacy was first announced late last year.
    Also, I love that instead of a geographic jurisdiction graphic or courthouse photo, we get picture of grazing bison. Entirely appropriate.

    Adel Mangi/Jeremy Feigenbaum
    It’s not beyond Dems to mess up the Mangi nomination. I want to stick with Mangi, for his progressiveness and youth, and especially due to the unfairness of the charges against him.

    Notwithstanding my support of Mangi, the WH is full of it for skipping over Feigenbaum because of age. Feigenbaum argued in front of SCOTUS at least twice and continued New Jersey’s unbroken record of SCOTUS-wins over my beloved New York. Anyone who can best NY in court is worth a circuit court seat.

    Liked by 1 person

  9. Frank's avatar

    A solid analysis of the professional diversity for the judicuiary under Biden. Bottom line, there have been some slight improvements, but there is still a long way to go. Biden has thus far been far more racially diverse than professionally diverse, even though he has been much better on both metrics than previous presidents (both Republican and Democratic): https://prospect.org/justice/2024-02-08-judges-consumer-worker-advocates/

    Liked by 2 people

  11. Zack's avatar

    My last thoughts for now on Mangi.
    I agree Biden/Democrats should stand behind him but I have a bad feeling the hatchet job here will work.
    Casey is in decent shape to win reelection but Tester/Brown and others are not and I could sadly in this case, that leading to Mangi being tossed overboard.
    Hope I’m wrong.
    P.S. Yea, wordpress is getting to be more of a pain in the butt with posting issues.
    At least I know I’m not the only one.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Dequan's avatar

      This is why I’m so upset with Schumer for his scheduling issues. Mangi along with Aframe & Berner should have been scheduled last week instead of Sherriff, Mehalchick & Baggio. Particularly with Barrasso out. That way if Mangi doesn’t have the votes, at least we can get started on Almonte or Feigenbaum ready to replace him.

      The waiting around hoping for the best is not a good strategy when we are dealing with any one of 179 circuit court seats. It’s why I will never forgive Cardin for playing Russian Roulette with the Berner seat.

      Like

  12. Rick's avatar

    If Mangi was in any danger of not being confirmed because of a fear of voting AYE on him before the election, then, worst case scenario, why couldn’t they just vote on him during the lame duck period. Waiting 9 months is better than him not being confirmed at all..

    But Brown and Tester have never voted against any Obama or Biden judicial nominees so I can’t imagine they’d start voting NO now

    Liked by 2 people

    • Dequan's avatar

      Waiting 9 months could be a risky strategy. You would be banking on nothing going wrong between now & then. 9 months is a long time & it’s possible something could go wrong.

      A senator can be incapacitated for a significant amount of time like Senator Feinstein was. You could have a death of a Democrat senator in a state with a Republican governor. There’s just so many things that could go wrong. I would rather know if he has the votes now & either confirm him or have him withdraw & tee up Almonte or Feigenbaum.

      Like

      • Rick's avatar

        Good point. Not much room for error when it’s a 51-49 senate, ESPECIALLY in these highly, highly polarized times.

        It’s hard to believe that 25 yrs ago things were nearly as polarized. Clinton had a GOP led senate for 6/8 years, yet he had his DC Circuit and other circuit court nominees confirmed. Some of the 9th circuit ones had to wait a while but were all eventually confirmed.. Only a District Court nominee from MO failed (Ronnie White) but he ended being confirmed under Obama.

        Liked by 1 person

  13. Zack's avatar

    @Rick Sad to say but that isn’t true.
    Once Republicans took back control of the Senate in 95, similar what McConnell did to Obama, Orrin Hatch did a massive blockade on Clinton judicial nominees, to the point William Rehquinst had to tell him to knock it off.
    Even when he did, it was still only to a certain degree.
    In many cases Clinton had to do package deals where he to accept Republican nominees like Richard Tallman or Stanley Marcus in order to get others like Betty Fletcher or Richard Paez through.
    Others like James Wynn or Elena Kagan among others never got votes which is why (until Trump) George W had the most inherited judicial vacancies.
    Bottom line, Republicans have been playing dirty with the courts for a long time, it’s only now (to some degree) that Democrats have realized that and are playing hardball to some degree (keeping the blue slip for circuit court seats dead) but still a long way to go.
    As for not voting while Barrasso was out, I imagine they wanted to take high road given that he was gone due to his wife’s death.
    Still, I wish they had voted on some of the tougher nominees but what’s done is done there.

    Liked by 2 people

    • Rick's avatar

      @Zack

      Fair enough. I assumed the the number of nominees confirmed after Jan 1995 when Republicans took over was ok (see link below),, especially considering how awful 2015-16 was for Obama.. But I didn’t know about the Hatch blockade, but at least he listened to Renquist. McConnell would never have listened to Roberts had he told him something similar. Hatch was bad, but McConnell was bad X 1000.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_federal_judges_appointed_by_Bill_Clinton

      Liked by 1 person

    • tsb1991's avatar

      The Senate has their older executive calendars published, I checked the last executive calendar of 1994 (the last day of a Democratic-controlled Senate during Bill Clinton’s presidency) and it was squeaky clean (all of the nominations were cleared out at the end of September, before they went on a two months-long break and not coming back until the end of November). Just a treaty or two on there but no nominations.

      The election results I’ll never fully understand actually have nothing to do with Trump or Bush v. Gore, it’s actually the 1996 congressional elections. Bill Clinton was re-elected easily and Republicans held control of Congress without breaking much of a sweat, including picking up two Senate seats. I know Republicans largely left Bob Dole’s campaign for dead and focused more on preserving their control of Congress, but the two years of the first Republican-controlled Congress produced a ton of fighting between Republicans and Bill Clinton. Voters by and large blamed Gingrich and congressional Republicans for the shutdowns, the gridlock, the budget fights, etc, Gingrich became wildly unpopular and the face of the Republican Party at the time (and not so much their presidential nominee), both Dole and congressional Republican candidates were tied to Gingrich during the election (the way you’d see Democrats get tied around Pelosi in this day and age). Voters agreed with all of that and responded again, by voting for a Republican congress.

      Democrats did gain House seats but their gains largely cancelled out the losses they further suffered after the 1994 elections, during the 95/96 Congress. Several southern Democrats in that Congress switched parties, I’m sure it was due to them seeing a lot of southern Democrats get wiped out in 1994 and seeing the writing on the wall for the party’s prospects down south, same situation as you saw with Richard Shelby in the Senate.

      Liked by 1 person

  14. CJ's avatar

    There are several Democratic Senators I’m wondering if they support Mangi’s nomination. I can already tell Manchin doesn’t likely support him. The Senators I’m not sure about are Kyrten Simema, John Fetterman, Bob Casey (There was a right-wing news article that claimed that Casey wasn’t sure to vote for Mangi or not, I’m not sure if the article is true or not, but that still brings Casey to the list), Jon Tester, and Jackie Rosen (Rosen didn’t support Edelmen, so there’s a chance here). I’m not as optimistic about Mangi being confirmed as others on the blog, especially as attacks on him ramp up.

    Liked by 1 person

  16. Zack's avatar

    @Rick, Hatch didn’t really back off to any large degree on judicial nominees/vacancies, only letting Clinton have some vacancies while leaving others opened.
    There were nearly 90 judicial vacancies for W to fill once he “won” and that was by design.
    Sans the Supreme Court seat, everything McConnell did to Obama, Hatch did to Clinton.
    Both are scum.
    @CJ I agree with you. If nothing else, Jacky Rosen helped sink one nominee based on smears, could very well do so again given the geopolitics surrounding Gaza.
    One final thing, as mentioned in the Kanter thread, the Judicial Crisis Network, the group pushing for the nomination to be withdrawn is run by a former Clarence Thomas clerk named Carrie Servino who is a horrible human being.
    If Mangi withdrew, they would attack whomever was nominated to replace him, especially if it was Feigenbaum
    as Carrie and her husband really, REALLY hate LGBT people as well.
    Something to keep in mind if Schumer and others give in to the haters on this one.

    Liked by 1 person

  17. Zack's avatar

    In the Senate, it looks like they are finally wrapping things up on legislation.
    Let’s see if Schumer does cloture motions for anyone here.
    Beside Mangi, Seth Aframe is going to be a party line vote so I wouldn’t mind seeing him teed up either, especially since he’ll be a flip.

    Liked by 1 person

    • tsb1991's avatar

      There’s still one final vote for passage of the bill, which might go into Wednesday. Best case scenario is that you get a cloture motion filed today and can be voted on before the Senate leaves after the supplemental passes, but I’d bank on cloture motions being sent out once the final vote on this bill happens.

      Liked by 1 person

    • rob's avatar

      Yes that is to the Munich Security Conference Senators from both parties have attended for many years. Usually about 20-30 senators go.

      Last year Schumer and McConnell went which was a big deal. This year Graham just pulled out but other GOP senators will be there most likely the ones who are voting for the Ukraine Aid bill.

      Hopefully Schumer sets up 3 judges for votes upon the senates return

      Liked by 1 person

  19. Dequan's avatar

    The U.S. senate is finally voting into the Israel & Ukraine $95 billion dollar aid package. It amazes me how they are firing at 5:30am on a recess day but can’t schedule more than one vote on Monday’s or votes after 3pm on Thursday’s. If they had even half this passion year ‘round, there would be almost no pending judges on the senate calendar.

    Like

  20. Ben's avatar

    Wow I’ve just woken up to see this continued senate action wrapping up. Schumer just field cloture on Becerra and Liebowitz. And an office of special counsel position. Senate will be back Monday Feb 26, so they’re not adding days off back on the other end of this recess.

    Liked by 1 person

      • Dequan's avatar

        Maybe Schumer not adding extra recess time on the back end of next week will actually put some spine into his threats of holding weekend sessions & taking away recess time. Him not giving them more recess time today was more important than the two SDFL cloture motions.

        If they had spent Friday, Saturday, Sunday & today wasting time but then were rewarded with a week off, there would be no incentive not to do it again. Now this will at least make Republicans pause next time. As I’ve said before, Schumer should have been done this. Business as usual Monday – Thursday & let them waste as much time dragging things out over the weekend. This is the most proud I’ve been of Schumer in a long time.

        Liked by 2 people

  22. tsb1991's avatar

    Between now and when the Senate gets back, things to keep you entertained include today’s special election to replace George Santos. Best reason for Suozzi winning IMO is that it would further narrow the House Republican majority and make running the House for Republicans that much more difficult. Current House is 219R-212D with (3R and 1D vacancy). It was just announced by Hochul that the D vacancy (also in New York) will have its special election on April 30, before special elections for any of the non-Santos R vacancies are filled. If Suozzi wins, you’d have a 219R-214D House after April 30 (the D vacancy is in a solidly Democratic district). That would put the House at 433 and the threshold at 217 for a majority, meaning Republicans could only afford one defection on party line votes, lol. The special elections for the non-Santos vacancies (one of them would be McCarthy’s seat after he peaced out) won’t be until May and June.

    On the judiciary front during the break, apart from any surprise retirements, the big day to watch would be next Wednesday to see if we get nominees for a 3/20 hearing.

    Liked by 1 person

    • tsb1991's avatar

      My math short-circuited, Republicans would have two votes to spare in a 219-214 majority (217-216 with two Nos). Currently they can afford three no votes (216-215).

      But as stated here, happy that there wasn’t a monkey’s paw curling with the Senate calendar and trading off days during a scheduled break in exchange for days off later on. We will need to wait until either the 26th or 27th to see if we can get cloture on an appeals court nominee.

      One other note is that it’s interesting to see the relationship between Schumer and McConnell, my understanding is that they’re on decent terms. Pretty sad how far House Republicans have fallen that McConnell comes out as the least worst Republican congressional leader. Totally different than the Reid-McConnell relationship were Reid borderline wanted to put a pillow over McConnell’s face in his sleep lol.

      Liked by 4 people

  25. Zack's avatar

    I would have liked to see cloture filed on a Circuit court nominee but the FL ones are judicial emergencies so I won’t complain about them getting filled.
    Also, given what could happen with the Circuit Court nominee it’s probably a good idea to get the FL nominees out of the way now so Rubio/Scott can’t hold them hostage later on.

    Liked by 2 people

      • Zack's avatar

        In regards to point number 1, I don’t think we’ll be seeing any nominees for those seats.
        As for point 2, Rubio or Scott could always decide to put their blue slips back in place even though the nominees have hit the floor.
        Sounds far fetched but we’ve seen crap like that done before, which is why I’m glad these are being voted on now.

        Liked by 1 person

      • Dequan's avatar

        If the administration were smart we will see nominees for the remaining SDFL seat as well as the MDFL seats. They should offer a young, hard left liberal for the 11th & work their way to a left of center nominee to go along with filling the district court seats. A circuit court vacancy should be used as leverage. Now will they do that is not something I’m willing to bet money on, just saying they should.

        As for Rubio & Scott pulling their blue slips back, that is meaningless at this point in the process. It worked for the senators of New Mexico & a few others after Trump nominated ACB to replace RBG because those nominees hadn’t had a hearing yet. Once the nominees are voted out of the SJC to the floor, blue slips can be used as toilet tissue & be more valuable than withholding support for home state nominees… Lol

        Liked by 1 person

      • Gavi's avatar

        The FL nominees are following other red state nominees along the road to confirmation. I see nothing special about them being teed up now.
        I don’t know how those senators can put something in place that they no longer have. The blue slip is literal a single piece of paper that’s returned to the SJC chair.
        There’s no tea leaf to read here.

        Liked by 1 person

    • Dequan's avatar

      Schumer was probably giving Rubio a little gift after that speech he gave in the senate floor supporting the aid package after Rand Paul’s hour long rant. That’s likely why we got cloture filed on Rubio’s backers nephew Leibowitz instead of Damian who is a Democrat. I just hope Biden signs her commission either first or the same day so she has seniority over him.

      Like

      • Dequan's avatar

        Yes Biden has been good on making sure the Democrat has seniority over the Republican pick since the 4 EDPA package nominees. There the Republican ended up being third out of the four because the fourth waited until the new year to start.

        My concern here is Damian didn’t have her cloture motion sent along with the other two like the previous package deals. A third non judicial nominee’s cloture was sent instead. If she ends up having her confirmation take place the same week then it’s possible but if not, I’m afraid she will end up getting her commission third.

        Even if Biden held off signing all three commissions the same day that would be fine because the two woman/Democrats are the two oldest & would get seniority in a tie breaker. But unlike the other package deals the disparity between the Republican pick & the two Democrat isn’t as big as I initially thought. Rubio’s pick Dems to be at worst slightly right of center if ever that so if he ended up with seniority it wouldn’t be the end of the world like in other cases.

        Liked by 2 people

  26. Dequan's avatar

    I was going through the failed Obama nominees. Obama nominated sever circuit court nominees between January 12, 2016 to March 17, 2016. If we can get a two month & one week stretch in Biden’s last year of his first term anywhere near what we got in Obama’s last year of his second term, we should get all six current circuit court vacancies without a nominee filled by the end of the year.

    Liked by 1 person

  27. Ryan J's avatar

    I don’t think there should be any problems with Tester or Brown voting against Biden’s most controversial nominees. Last night, I looked at how Tester and Brown voted on Trump judges in 2017 and 2018, and their voting patterns were more liberal than Manchin, Donnelly, Heitkamp, McCaskill, and Bill Nelson. Brown’s voting pattern on Trump judges was more liberal than the median Dem senator.

    That being said, Sinema and Rosen(!) could be problematic. They haven’t been up for re-election before so there’s no data on how their voting patterns change as it gets close to the election.

    Liked by 2 people

    • keystone's avatar

      Is Sinema even running for re-election. I thought I read that her fundraising efforts have dropped off and she hasn’t started collecting signatures that she needs to run as an independent and the deadline is ~1.5 months away.

      I’m less worried about her not voting for judges and more worried about her delivering the 3 noms we need for AZ.

      Liked by 1 person

      • Dequan's avatar

        The good thing about Sinema is when it comes to judges, she’s been rock solid. I believe Kato Crews is the only Biden judge she has voted against. And if Roopali Desai is any indication, we could get an A+ nominee (Or two or three) for the district court while simultaneously getting Republicans to vote for them. Perhaps we can also get them confirmed quickly as well.

        Like

      • Hank's avatar

        Fingers crossed that Sinema does not run again – I am ready to never have to think about her attention-seeking, two-faced schtick ever again. Gallego would be far, far better, and although Lake is insane, at least with her you know what you’re getting (and if Lake beats Gallego, then chances are Trump has beaten Biden and we have bigger problems).

        I wouldn’t expect good nominees from Sinema just because of Desai – Desai is Sinema’s close personal friend and former campaign counsel. If Sinema is selecting from people she doesn’t personally know, I highly doubt she’d pick someone progressive.

        Liked by 1 person

  28. Joe's avatar

    I’ve said it a few times, but with 10 months to go and the deck mostly clear, I’m very confident that all currently announced circuit seats will get filled. I’m hopeful we see a sixth circuit nominee soon, the others may be a few months away.

    I do agree with the sentiment of others that it would make me feel a whole lot better if the three circuit nominees in the floor could get confirmed prior to Easter recess.

    Liked by 2 people

    • Dequan's avatar

      I don’t know how senate rules work. Hopefully they can just take the vote & be done with it. If there is a time limit associated with it, Schumer should schedule all the time for it starting Thursday at 3pm. They can then take the vote the following Monday before 5pm so the normal votes can start at 5:30pm. No regular time should be wafted for this nonsense.

      Liked by 1 person

    • tsb1991's avatar

      He was impeached by one vote, there were two absences from both parties and one of the Democratic absences was from COVID. Which speaking of, apparently there’s new CDC sidelines that would drop the five-day isolation recommendation and go down to a day, which might help if future Senate Democrats get COVID, it could mean not being down a member for a whole week.

      Liked by 1 person

      • Dequan's avatar

        That’s great news on the CDC guidelines. Senate Republicans clearly have been following those guidelines for years. With Manchin effectively voting with Republicans on every liberal judicial nominee, Democrats can’t afford to lose a senator for a week for Covid for the rest of the year.

        Schumer really needs to come close to clearing the deck, particularly with the three circuit court nominees pending over the four weeks the senate is in session when they return. Then there is 12 weeks the senate is in session before the start of the Summer recess. Hopefully at least 4 of the 6 pending circuit court nominees currently without a nominee will be confirmed before the Summer recess starts.

        Like

  30. Zack's avatar

    IMO, all of the pending nominees including the Circuit court ones who have had their hearings done need to be confirmed before the Easter Break.
    If nothing else, to find out if the votes aren’t there on a couple of them, especially Mangi.
    I know we focus on Tester or Manchin but Jacky Rosen is up for reelection as well and she helped sink at least one district court nomination that we know of.
    If certain nominees don’t have the votes, we need to find out sooner versus later so we can get replacements.

    Liked by 1 person

  31. raylodato's avatar

    Some folks on here have said that they think LA nominees are less likely now due to comments that Sen Kennedy made recently.

    Can someone direct me to those comments? I’m not seeing them, and when the previous nominees from LA were named, Kennedy stated he was surprised that there wasn’t another one named from their list.

    Like

    • Dequan's avatar

      Your welcome. Yea I think the two main factors for not expecting any more Louisiana nominees are it’s an election year & there’s no current vacancy in the 5th-LA.

      That’s why I disagreed with others in the blog we won’t get anymore nominee as for the SDFL or MDFL. There’s a vacancy on the 11th. We should either get an A or A+ nominee for that seat or a lesser nominee along with some district court nominees to go along with them.

      Like

      • keystone's avatar

        IMO, the two most likely 11th candidates are:

        Embry Kidd- born ~1983, MDFL Magistrate, based in Orlando, former AUSA, Roger Gregory Clerk. He doesn’t have any donations, but his wife (who is also a well known lawyer in the area) has made a handful of donations to dems.

        Stacie Harris – born ~1980, Chief Special Victims Section, US Attorney’s Office MDFL. Worked for the Justice Dept for the past 16 years+ and her area of focus is trafficking. She was a finalist when they were selecting the MDFL US Attorney. When Rick Scott was Governor, he gave her an award for her work prosecuting traffickers. She’s donated to Kamala, Biden, & Warnock.

        Liked by 2 people

      • Hank's avatar

        Let’s be realistic here – I highly, highly doubt that Rubio/Scott are going to return blue slips for two 40-something Black lawyers. And although I would love it if the WH told the FL senators to go take a hike and nominated a young liberal, that’s not likely given this WH’s track record – there has literally been only nominee who didn’t get any blue slips (Mathis), and the WH hasn’t nominated a candidate lacked one of the two blue slips since Johnstone (all the way back in September of 2022). Far more likely that the WH and senators compromise and we end up with some white prosecutor in his 50s.

        My bigger concern is that the WH will let Rubio/Scott stall so much that this seat (and the TN senators do the same with the 2 CA6 seats) will remain vacant until after the election. It took a year and a half after Costa announced his resignation to get Ramirez nominated, and Kolar wasn’t nominated until 14 months after Kanne’s death. If anyone has any info suggesting that the WH isn’t going to be as slow/stupid with the FL and TN vacancies, please share it and help us all feel better.

        Liked by 1 person

      • Dequan's avatar

        @Hank

        I remember during one of the rants at the SJC over a year ago, Cornyn said the White House told him & Cruz they had three weeks to give their recommendations for the 5th. I know they ended up not having a spine & letting them stall for months, but perhaps knowing this is an election year, maybe this time they will stand their ground. As much as I have criticized the administration at times, I just can’t imagine they will let any of the six circuit court seats go without a nominee with 10 months left in the year.

        Liked by 1 person

      • star0garnet's avatar

        @Hank

        Well, we’re close to the point where the relevant part of the WH Counsel’s office won’t have much else to do. I’d guess they’ve already started processing 18-20 of the 23 future nominees for blue state+Maine+DC district seats. Thus why they pretty clearly reached out to senior-eligible circuit judges a few months ago.

        I consider the act of leaving 13/41 circuit seats unfilled last congress as probably the most irresponsible act of this administration, but Dems’ midterm performance muted the impact of that act. But as Dequan says, the difference between end of term and end of a congress is a major one, and I doubt they will willingly leave any fillable seat unfilled.

        Given the admin’s choice to try to work with GOP senators for circuit vacancies, it’s played out almost exactly how you’d expect. The only unsustainably uncooperative senators who’ve had a circuit vacancy before this year are Blackburn, Hagerty, and Daines. Cruz is borderline in that category, and as per Cornyn, they faced deadlines. The admin’s proven they’re willing to forego blue slips, which is all it needs to do to secure the cooperation of 2/3+ of GOPers on circuit nominations. Blackburn, Hagerty, and Budd are the only real problems they’re currently facing, and with the relevant people in the counsel’s office about to turn their attention to circuit vacancies, I doubt they’ll be taken for fools by those three (or Rick Scott, who’s more in the Cornyn class).

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  34. Zack's avatar

    Andre Mathis is the only judge so far where both senators refused to return blue slips but Rachel_Bloomekatz, Arianna Freeman, Cindy Chung, and Anthony Johnstone are also Circuit Court judges who were confirmed with one Republican hold out.
    I know we haven’t liked some of the judges we’ve seen (especially a certain 5th Circuit judge) from Biden & Company but at this point, the notion they’re going to allow seats that have opened up now (IMO they’re likely going to be the last ones for a while) to stay open the rest of the year is highly unlikely at this point.
    Only question is who the nominees will be and how much of a pain in the butt Manchin or other senators from team blue will be about them.

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