Latino/a Lifetime Judges Confirmed During the Biden Administration
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President Biden has appointed and the Senate has confirmed 39 Latino/a* lifetime judges, including 24 Latina judges, who are now serving lifetime appointments on the federal bench. Importantly, nearly half (19) of these judges come to the bench with significant experience protecting and advancing civil and human rights.
- In our nation’s history, there have only ever been 188 lifetime confirmations of Latino/a judges. President Biden has appointed more than 20 percent of them. President Biden has set a new record for the most lifetime confirmations of Latino/a judges during a presidency of any length.
- There have only ever been 63 lifetime confirmations of Latina judges, and nearly 40 percent were appointed by President Biden.
- Only 30 Latino/a judges — including 10 Latina judges — have ever served on a federal circuit court, and more than one quarter were appointed by President Biden. This includes the first Latino/a judges on the D.C. Circuit (Bradley Garcia) and the Seventh Circuit (Nancy Maldonado), and the first Latina judge on the Fifth Circuit (Irma Ramirez).
- President Biden has appointed the first Latino/a lifetime district court judges in three states: Massachusetts (Judge Margaret Guzman), Minnesota (Judge Jeffrey Bryan), and Ohio (Judge David Ruiz).
- Seventy of our 91 Article III district courts (including 38 entire states) have never had a Latina lifetime district court judge, and seven of our 13 federal circuit courts have never had a Latina judge — the First, Third, Fourth, Sixth, Eighth, Tenth, and DC Circuits.
*Note: We use Latino, Latina, and Latino/a in this fact sheet to distinguish between appointees who identify as cisgender men, appointees who identify as cisgender women, and appointees (total) of any gender, respectively. None of the Biden administration’s appointees to federal courts identify as transgender or non-binary. Indeed, our nation is still waiting for its first trans or non-binary lifetime federal judge. It’s long past time. These terms are also overly simplistic, as many nominees identify — according to the Federal Judicial Center’s terms — as Hispanic, as more than one race or ethnicity, in a more individualized way, or in other ways that aren’t captured in the data. We celebrate their identities and the lived experience and long overdue representation they bring to the bench.