A U.S. Senate panel on Thursday advanced the nomination of one of Democratic President Joe Biden's final picks to serve as a federal appeals court judge over the objections of Republican Senator Thom Tillis, who warned he had secured enough votes to potentially prevent the nominee from being confirmed.
The Democratic-led Senate Judiciary Committee voted 11-10 along party lines to advance the nomination of North Carolina Solicitor General Ryan Park to serve as a judge on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to the full Senate to consider.
Those voting against him included Tillis, Park's home-state senator, who said the White House did not sufficiently work with him to help select a suitable, bipartisan nominee to serve on the 4th Circuit, whose jurisdiction includes North Carolina.
During a hearing in July, Tillis highlighted cases Park's boss, Democratic North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, pursued challenging Republican President-elect Donald Trump's tough immigration policies during his first term. Stein was elected North Carolina's governor last week.
"I confirmed this morning what I said in this hearing a couple of months ago: I have the votes to defeat this nominee on the floor," Tillis said during the hearing.
Tillis did not specify which members of the Democrats' narrow 51-49 majority might vote against Park. But he said assuming no attendance issues, Park "will never get confirmed."
White House spokesman Andrew Bates called Park a deeply qualified nominee and said obstructing his nomination "is costing the people of North Carolina."
The party-line vote on Park contrasted to the bipartisan voice vote by the panel to advance one of Biden's pending district court nominees, Sharad Desai of Arizona, whose sister, Roopali, now sits on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Park is one of five pending nominees Biden has put forward for seats on federal appeals courts that have yet to be confirmed by the Senate.
Democrats in the chamber are rushing to confirm as many of Biden's outstanding judicial nominees as possible before January, when Trump takes office and control of the Senate flips to the Republicans.
But Senate Democrats have maintained a practice adopted by Republicans during Trump's first term of requiring senators to return "blue slips" only for district court nominees to be considered, not appellate court ones like Park.
Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, the chair of the committee, said the White House had "consulted extensively" with North Carolina's Republican senators about Park's nomination, which included reviewing alternate potential nominees and facilitating interviews with him.
If confirmed, Park would be the first Asian American to serve on the Richmond, Virginia-based appeals court, where Democratic appointees make up nine of the 15 active judges.
Park clerked for two U.S. Supreme Court justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in 2020, and David Souter. He has served under Stein since 2017 and as the state's top appellate lawyer since 2020.
In that role, he argued unsuccessfully on behalf of the University of North Carolina in the U.S. Supreme Court case that resulted in the court's 6-3 conservative majority last year curtailing race-conscious college admissions practices.
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