The U.S. Senate on Monday elevated a Florida magistrate judge to a seat on a federal appeals court, as Senate Democrats continued their push to confirm as many of President Joe Biden's remaining judicial nominees as possible before Republican President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
The Democratic-led Senate voted 49-45 in favor of U.S. Magistrate Judge Embry Kidd in Orlando joining the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, whose 13 active judges includes seven appointees of Republican presidents.
He was one of five nominees to the 13 intermediate appeals courts who were awaiting Senate consideration at the time of the Nov. 5 election, which handed Trump the White House and delivered control of the chamber to Republicans.
Biden has 28 announced nominees to the trial and appellate courts pending. The majority of his 216 confirmed judicial appointees have been women and people of color, in keeping with the Democratic president's vow to diversify the federal bench.
"After we vote today, we'll keep going," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor ahead of Monday's vote on Kidd. "Tonight, I will file on additional judges who we will move forward on the floor this week."
Before joining the bench in 2019, Kidd had served as a federal prosecutor for about five years. Earlier in his career he worked as an associate at the law firm Williams & Connolly in Washington, D.C.
Wilson was the second Black person to ever serve on the court, which hears appeals from Alabama, Georgia and Florida. With Monday's vote, Biden will have appointed the only two Black judges currently on the 13-member court, Kidd and U.S. Circuit Judge Nancy Abudu.
Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, during a June hearing described Kidd as having an "amazing" record on the bench, having issued more than 13,700 opinions.
"Judge Kidd's experience in private practice and public service, in addition to his experience as a magistrate judge, has prepared him to serve with distinction on the federal bench," Durbin said in a statement on Monday.
During the June hearing, Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah pressed Kidd about a law review article written by Monica Bell, a Yale Law School professor who had mentioned Kidd, a former Yale classmate, in the article's acknowledgements.
The 2007 article explored state laws that made the death penalty available for the rape of a child and argued that "child rape statutes, though not laden with the exact same racial baggage as more general rape statutes, are still racialized."
Asked by Lee if he agreed with those statements, Kidd said he did not share those views. Kidd later in a written submission to the panel noted that after the article was published, the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008 held that capital punishment for a non-fatal rape of a child was unconstitutional.
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US Senate Democrats rush to confirm judges before Trump takes office
