YOUNG OP-ED: Biden should sign the Judges Act to relieve a national crisis

The following column by Senator Todd Young (R-Ind.) was originally published in the Washington Post on December 12, 2024.

By Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.)

Too many Americans are being denied access to our justice system because of an overload of cases and a shortage of federal judges.

The last major expansion of the federal judicial branch occurred in 1990, when then-Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Joe Biden sponsored legislation that created 85 new judgeships for President George H.W. Bush to fill.

Biden once again has the opportunity to join Congress in resolving a judicial crisis by signing into law the Judges Act: bipartisan legislation I introduced to increase the number of federal district court judges in the most overworked regions of the country.

The United States has grown by about 100 million people since 1990. This is also the longest period that Congress has not authorized new permanent district court judgeships since the courts were established in 1789. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are forced to wait years for their federal cases to be heard. Many litigants feel their only option is to settle cases for suboptimal outcomes to provide some certainty. Our justice system is collapsing under the weight of caseloads: Overworked judges are retiring, andthe staggering burden discourages high-quality candidates from pursuing the federal judiciary.

Last year, the Judicial Conference of the United States — a nonpartisan policymaking body for federal courts — recommended that Congress create 66 new district court judgeships to help alleviate this crisis. In Congress, both sides agree that there is a judicial emergency. But politically, it has been difficult to add federal judges.

In 2020, I suggested a solution. At the time, the outcome of the 2020 election was a 50-50 proposition. That year, I proposed that Congress pass a bill creating the judgeships during the campaign and then let the American people decide on Election Day which presidential candidate should fill them. This approach would haveensured the legislation would be debated only on its merits, not its political implications.

The idea took four years to catch on, but in August — when again there seemed to be an equal chance of either party winning the election — the Senate unanimously passed the Judges Act to add 66 district court judgeships. And Thursday — in a bipartisan vote — the House of Representatives passed the bill, sending it to Biden’s desk.

Regrettably, the Biden administration has issued a veto threat, with disregard for the long bipartisan history behind the JudgesAct and a distorted interpretation of how the bill works. It said the bill is “unnecessary to the efficient and effective administration of justice.” Yet more than 300 federal judges appointed by both Democratic and Republican presidents called for the bill’s passage after the election.

The statement also said the bill was passed “with just a few weeks left in the 118th Congress.” Ideally, the bill would have passed the Democratic-controlled Senate earlier in the summer, allowing the House of Representatives more time to consider it before the presidential election. But that did not happen, and members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have long advocated these reforms based on the judicial needs in their states.

Finally, the administration said the judgeships created by the bill are not needed because of vacancies “senators have sought to hold open,” implying Republican political motivations.But this fails to take into account that vacancies have existed in red and blue states, including vacancies in blue states that went unfilled during the first Trump administration.

The White House’s argument on this point underscores a critical safety mechanism for the bill: the Senate’s existing “blue slip” process for district court nominees. The blue slip ensures that home-state senators have the opportunity to advise on nominations for district courts in their state.

Here is how the law would work: Asincoming president,Donald Trump would get to nominate up to 22 new permanent district court judges in his four-year term. Thereafter, tranches of 10 or 11 judges would be added every two years until 2035, resulting in more than 40 judges being nominated by future presidents to make the appointments as fair and bipartisan as possible.

This is a common-sense approach to a politically challenging problem. The legislation is widely supported by leading legal organizations and advocates across our country.

I urge Biden to do the right thing for our judicial system, as he did in 1990, and sign the JudgesAct into law.