President Joe Biden on Wednesday said he planned to nominate North Carolina Solicitor General Ryan Park to serve as a judge on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals over the objections of the state's two Republican senators.
Biden announced Park's nomination alongside three new picks to serve as trial court judges in Illinois, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. If confirmed, Park would be the first Asian American to serve on the Richmond, Virginia-based appeals court.
Those four nominations will face a tight timeline to win confirmation in the Senate in an election year. Democrats have a narrow 51-49 majority in the chamber, and many Republicans have stepped up vows to not support any of Biden's nominees.
Park's home state senators, Republicans Thom Tillis and Ted Budd, in a joint statement called his nomination a "non-starter," adding the "the White House has already been informed they do not have the votes for confirmation."
Their support is not necessarily needed, as Senate Democrats have maintained a practice adopted by Republicans during former President Donald Trump's tenure of requiring senators to return "blue slips" only for district court nominees and not appellate court ones from their states for them to be considered.
But their opposition could nonetheless complicate the path forward for Park, who has served under Democratic North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein since 2017 and has been the state's solicitor general since 2020.
The Harvard Law School graduate clerked for two U.S. Supreme Court justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in 2020, and David Souter. Before joining the North Carolina Department of Justice, he had worked as an associate at Boies Schiller Flexner.
In his role as North Carolina's top appellate lawyer, he argued at the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the University of North Carolina in a lawsuit by affirmative action opponents challenging its consideration of race in student admissions.
The high court's 6-3 conservative majority in 2023 ruled against UNC and Harvard in a landmark decision that curtailed the use of practices aimed at boosting enrollment of Black, Hispanic and other underrepresented minority students on U.S. campuses.
Biden nominated Byron Conway, a shareholder at the law firm Habush, Habush & Rottier in Green Bay, to serve as a district court judge on Wisconsin's Eastern District.
That state has one Republican senator, Ron Johnson, who previously refused to turn in a blue slip for another of Biden's nominees to the same court, William Pocan, in 2022, despite earlier recommending him, dooming his nomination.
The state's other senator, Democrat Tammy Baldwin, in a statement said Conway was recommended by both herself and Johnson. His spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
In the Central District of Illinois, Biden moved to elevate U.S. Magistrate Judge Jonathan Hawley, a former public defender, to serve as a life-tenured district court judge.
And in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Biden nominated Judge Gail Weilheimer of the Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas to serve as a district court judge.
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