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NEWS JANUARY 4, 2021 ¦ 13

How Liberal Groups Are Preparing to Help a
Biden White House Appoint More Diverse Judges

By Jacqueline Thomsen

A The White House. (Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi / ALM)
fter President Donald Trump and Senate Leaders of the groups say they expect that if Biden
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell oversaw doesn’t put forward the exact nominees they sug-
a reshaping of the federal judiciary over the gested, the potential judges will fit that diversity cri-
past four years, liberal judicial groups are rolling up teria they say has been sorely lacking under Trump.
their sleeves to help President-elect Joe Biden get The leaders declined to say which names they’re
Democratic-appointed judges on the bench. suggesting for the nominations, but maintain that
While the Federalist Society played an outsize role it’s a diverse coalition: The liberal American Con-
in the Trump administration’s selection of judicial stitution Society says its list of judicial nominees is
nominees, no one liberal group is the catch-all for 46% Black, indigenous or people of color, and 55%
judges on the left. Multiple organizations have al- are women. Nine percent are public defenders, and
ready provided the Biden transition team with lists 24% are plaintiffs or civil rights attorneys.
of potential nominees for any of the remaining ju- Russ Feingold, the president of ACS, said he
dicial vacancies, and seats that could open in the worked alongside Vanita Gupta of the Leadership
future. Conference on Civil and Human Rights and Nan
After four years of judicial nominations dominat- Aron, the head of Alliance for Justice, to discuss the
ed by white men, many of the groups are pushing for kinds of judges progressives want to see put on the
Biden to pick more diverse judges—not just when it bench.
comes to race and ethnicity, but the kinds of legal Feingold said he sent the Biden transition ACS’s
backgrounds they have, including making sure pub- list of 352 potential nominees—140 for circuit courts
lic defenders and civil rights litigators are in the mix.
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