3 black, Hispanic judicial nominees Biden voted against confirming

By Ryan Foley, Christian Post Reporter Tuesday, February 01, 2022

2. DC Circuit Court of Appeals Nominee Miguel Estrada

President George W. Bush nominated Miguel Estrada, a Hispanic American, to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2001. With Democrats in control of the Senate for most of Bush’s first two years in office, Estrada did not even get a hearing until 2003, when Republicans retook control of the Senate. 

Estrada was never confirmed to the bench because the Senate repeatedly failed to end debate on his nomination by invoking cloture, a process that required 60 votes at the time.

In all seven failed attempts to invoke cloture on the Estrada nomination, Biden voted against invoking cloture. 

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Estrada eventually withdrew his nomination after an unsuccessful confirmation process that lasted more than two years. Years after the fact, memorandums where Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which included Biden, candidly shared their views about Estrada became public.

Specifically, in a November 2001 memo to Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., staff members on the Senate Judiciary Committee discussed a meeting that took place between then-Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and “representatives of various civil rights groups.” According to the staffers, the meeting “focused on identifying the most controversial and/or vulnerable judicial nominees, and a strategy for targeting them.” 

“They also identified Miguel Estrada as especially dangerous, because he has a minimal paper trail, he is Latino, and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment,” the memo read. Estrada would have become the first Hispanic appointed to the Supreme Court if Bush had nominated him to serve on the bench and the Senate confirmed him. 

Current Justice Sonia Sotomayor, appointed to the bench by Democratic President Barack Obama, ultimately became the first Hispanic American to serve on the Supreme Court upon her confirmation in 2009.