66% of Biden-appointed judges are women, people of color — a record high, report says

The majority of federal judges appointed by President Joe Biden have been women and minorities, making him first president to select mostly nonwhite and nonmale judges, according to a report.

During his first 1,019 days as president, Biden had appointed 145 judges to district courts, appeals courts and the U.S. Supreme Court, according to a Dec. 4 report from the Pew Research Center.

About two-thirds of them, 66%, have been women. Equally, 66% have been Hispanic, Black, Asian or members of a different racial or ethnic minority group.

Biden has far outstripped his predecessors in this regard. During the same point in former President Donald Trump’s tenure, 24% of the judges he appointed were women and 14% were minorities.

Likewise, during the same point in former President Barack Obama’s presidency, 47% of the judges he put forward were women and 37% were minorities.

The one judge Biden nominated to the Supreme Court was Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who became the first Black woman to serve on the court in 2022. He had publicly committed to nominating a Black woman for the position, according to Reuters.

So far, the overall number of judges Biden has appointed, 145, has been about average when compared with past presidents, according to Pew. At the same point in his presidency, Trump had appointed 153 and Obama had selected 115.

This story was originally published December 5, 2023 at 3:34 PM with the headline "66% of Biden-appointed judges are women, people of color — a record high, report says."