The U.S. Senate on Monday elevated U.S. District Judge Ana de Alba to a seat on the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, confirming a first-generation Mexican-American and daughter of farmworkers to the largest federal appeals court.
The Democratic-led Senate voted 48-43 to confirm Ana de Alba, who just last year became the first Latina to sit on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California.
Moderate Senator Joe Manchin broke with his fellow Democrats to vote against her, something the West Virginian has done only for six of Biden's other judicial nominees, after Republicans balked at de Alba's sentencing record.
Senator Dick Durbin, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, in a statement called de Alba "a seasoned litigator with both federal and state-level judicial experience" and a "legal champion for civil and labor rights."
The vote gave Biden his eighth appointment to the 9th Circuit, which hears appeals from Alaska, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington. The liberal-leaning court will now have 16 active judges appointed by Democratic presidents and 13 by Republicans.
Biden, a Democrat, has pledged to work to diversify the federal bench. The vast majority of his 154 confirmed judges have been women and people of color.
De Alba, a California native, had after earning her law degree in 2007 joined the law firm Lang, Richert & Patch in Fresno, where she later became a partner.
She was appointed by former California Governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, to a state court judgeship in Fresno County in 2018, and in 2022, Biden nominated her to serve a federal trial judge. The Senate voted 53-45 to confirm her then.
Biden nominated her to the 9th Circuit following the resignation earlier this year of Paul Watford, who left the bench before becoming eligible for retirement or senior status at age 65 and is now at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.
Senate Republicans in opposing her nomination criticized her decision to sentence a child pornography defendant to a shorter prison term than federal sentencing guidelines suggested.
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