On December 23, late into the night, when people prepped for Christmas Eve, President Joe Biden vetoed S. 4199.
S. 4199, also known as “Judicial Understaffing Delays Getting Emergencies Solved Act of 2024” or the “JUDGES Act of 2024,” would have added 66 federal district judgeships over a decade.
The bill meant to help “25 district courts in 13 states including California, Texas, and Delaware.”
Case filings have exploded lately, causing massive workloads for judges and staff. The Hill reported that “pending federal civil cases has risen 346 percent over the past 20 years, with roughly 82,000 cases pending as of March.”
Hence why the bill had bipartisan support and all senators voted for it.
Here’s the thing. The House played politics with the bill. Honestly…who can blame them?
The Senate passed the bill unanimously in August. That means the
But we all know that bills need to start in the House.
Well, in August, we all thought VP Kamala Harris would win in November. So the Republican-controlled House did not pick up the bill.
That is…until after November 5, when President-elect Donald Trump demolished Harris.
Biden threatened to vet S. 4199.
The House passed the bill 236-173. Most of the Democratic representatives voted against it.
Biden didn’t keep it a secret that he voted for it to deny Trump an opportunity to appoint judges:
S. 4199 seeks to hastily add judgeships with just a few weeks left in the 118th Congress. The House of Representative’s hurried action fails to resolve key questions in the legislation, especially regarding how the new judgeships are allocated, and neither the House of Representatives nor the Senate explored fully how the work of senior status judges and magistrate judges affects the need for new judgeships. The efficient and effective administration of justice requires that these questions about need and allocation be further studied and answered before we create permanent judgeships for life-tenured judges.S. 4199 would create new judgeships in States where Senators have sought to hold open existing judicial vacancies. Those efforts to hold open vacancies suggest that concerns about judicial economy and caseload are not the true motivating force behind passage of this bill now.
Biden’s veto disappointed Judge Robert Conrad, the director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts.
“It is not a bill that was hastily put together. Rather it is the product of careful and detailed analysis which considers primarily the weighted caseload per active judge in each judicial district, while also factoring in the contribution of senior judges, magistrate judges and visiting judges,” stated Conrad, as reported by The Hill.
Conrad called out Biden: “This veto is a deviation from the long historical pattern of approving judgeship bills that awarded new judgeships to sitting Presidents. The President’s veto is contrary to the actions of Senator Biden who helped pass many of those bills.”
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