judicial diversity
July 19, 2022 -
For weeks, reproductive rights advocates pressured President Biden not to go through with his plan to nominate an anti-abortion lawyer to a Kentucky judgeship. Biden backed down last week, citing a GOP senator's objection and a Senate tradition with Jim Crow roots.
February 9, 2022 -
The president has pledged to nominate the first Black woman to the highest court in the land to replace retiring liberal Justice Stephen Breyer. A few of the potential justices are judges or judicial nominees from Southern states, including two with extensive experience as voting rights lawyers.
November 18, 2021 -
Voting rights groups have challenged election districts for the Louisiana Supreme Court, which counts just one Black justice among its seven members. Legislators want to add new districts to settle the suit, but their most recent attempt broke down over the issue of how many should have majority-Black populations.
July 1, 2021 -
The president has nominated a record number of people of color to federal courts, but his choice to fill a vacancy on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears cases from the Carolinas, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia, is a white man.
June 15, 2021 -
Federal appellate courts in the Deep South are disproportionately white compared to the region's population, but President Joe Biden has pledged to diversify the courts with his nominations. Efforts to expand the region's mostly white state appellate courts could also lead to more diversity on the bench.
April 28, 2021 -
Republican-controlled legislatures are restructuring the judicial branches in three Southern states in ways that could benefit the GOP and threaten judicial diversity. By contrast, legislatures in several other states in the region could expand appellate courts in ways that foster greater diversity on the bench.
November 6, 2020 -
Conservatives won supreme court races across the South this week. The results could shift Kentucky's high court to the right. The race for North Carolina chief justice is too close to call as mail-in ballots are still being tallied.
