President Joe Biden vetoed a bill that would have added 66 new judges to federal courts. The bill previously received bipartisan support.
Biden said in a statement that the bill aims 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 statement says. “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.”
He explained that the bill 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.”
The JUDGES Act would have increased the number of trial court judges in 25 federal district courts.
“Congress has not created a new district court judgeship since 2003 and has not enacted comprehensive judgeship legislation since 1990,” the bill reads. “This represents the longest period of time since district courts of the United States were established in 1789 that Congress has not authorized any new permanent district court judgeships.”
“By the end of fiscal year 2022, filings in the district courts of the United States had increased by 30 percent since the last comprehensive judgeship legislation,” it continues. “As of March 31, 2023, there were 686,797 pending cases in the district courts of the United States, with an average of 491 weighted case filings per judgeship over a 12-month period.”
“To deal with increased filings in the district courts of the United States, the Judicial Conference of the United States requested the creation of 66 new district court judgeships in its 2023 report.”
