'A Major Milestone': Senate Confirms Joe Biden’s 200th Lifetime Federal Judge

WASHINGTON — The Senate confirmed President Joe Biden’s 200th judicial nominee on Wednesday, a significant milestone both in terms of the number of lifetime federal judges he has confirmed and the astounding diversity he has infused into the nation’s courts.

With the Senate’s confirmation of Angela Martinez to a U.S. district court in Arizona, Biden surpassed the number of lifetime federal judges that Donald Trump had confirmed by the same point in his presidency. Trump, who made judicial confirmations a major focus of his presidency, was at 196 at this point in his presidency.

It is the diversity of Biden’s judges, though, that really jumps out. He has put more women, people of color, LGBTQ+ people and professionally diverse people into lifetime federal judgeships than any of his predecessors, and in some cases, more than any of them combined.

Nearly two-thirds of Biden’s judges are women (127), and nearly two-thirds are people of color (125). About 40% of Biden’s judges are women of color (79).

To put this into some context: A total of 3,254 white men have served on the Supreme Court, appeals courts or district courts since the U.S. federal court system was created in 1789, according to the Federal Judicial Center.

In all that time, 416 judges have been white women, and 565 have been people of color. Just 197 have been women of color.

The professional diversity of Biden’s judges is also off the charts. More than 40% of them (85) have backgrounds as public defenders or civil rights lawyers ― a huge break from the centuries-long tradition of plucking people for federal judgeships from their jobs as prosecutors or corporate attorneys.

“When you walk into a courtroom and your freedom and your business and your