Biden vetoes once-bipartisan effort to add 66 federal judgeships, citing ‘hurried’ House action

President Biden vetoed a once-bipartisan effort to add 66 federal district judgeships, saying “hurried action” by the House left important questions unanswered about the life-tenured positions. “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 president said in a statement. “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,” Biden said. In issuing his veto Monday, Biden said the bill would also have created new judgeships in states where senators have not filled existing judicial vacancies and that those efforts “suggest that concerns about judicial economy and caseload are not the true motivating force behind passage of this bill now.