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Indiana’s judicial nominees to 7th Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana are being formally renominated by the Biden administration after Senate Republicans returned their names to the White House on Dec. 20.
Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond School of Law professor, told Indiana Lawyer that Magistrate Judge Joshua Kolar of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana, St. Joseph Superior Judge Cristal C. Brisco and Elkhart Superior Judge Gretchen S. Lund were on a list of federal judicial nominees announced for renomination Monday.
Tobias said the move was unusual and reflected the increasingly partisan nature of the confirmation process.
“It is delay for delay’s sake and a poke in the eye of the nominees and (President Joe) Biden,” he wrote in an email Tuesday.
Tobias said Republicans gave no specific reason for the move.
He also said he was not certain which member of the Republican leadership was responsible, but he opined that it was a party caucus decision and likely done with input from Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, the ranking Republican member of the Judiciary Committee.
Kolar was nominated in July to fill the vacancy on the 7th Circuit created by the 2022 death of Judge Michael Kanne.
Brisco and Lund are seeking to fill the Northern District vacancies created by Judges Theresa Springmann and Jon DeGuilio taking senior status on Jan. 23, 2021, and July 17, 2023, respectively.
Kolar’s nomination advanced through the Senate Judiciary Committee by a 16-5 vote in September.
Brisco and Lund made their first appearances before the Senate committee on Dec. 13.
Tobias noted that Brisco and Lund received virtually no questions from committee members at their initial appearances. Kolar received more questions from the committee, but members seemed satisfied by most of his answers, Tobias added.
Tobias described the action as “gratuitous.”
He said that it only briefly delays the nominees, with the White House quickly renominating them for confirmation.
The Indiana nominees will not need another hearing, Tobias added, but he told Indiana Lawyer on Tuesday that Republican senators might discuss them at a Judiciary Committee executive business meeting initially scheduled for Thursday, unless the GOP senators ask for them to be held over another week.
That meeting has since been canceled.
The law professor said he does not think the renomination will affect the nominees’ confirmation bids, as all seem well-qualified, had successful hearings and received strong support from Indiana Republican Sens. Todd Young and Mike Braun.
While sending judicial nominees back to the White House has been rare, Tobias opined that a trigger for partisanship was GOP Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s 2015-16 block of former President Barack Obama’s nominees in his last two years as president, which culminated in the GOP refusal to consider current Attorney General Merrick Garland, who was previously the United States Supreme Court nominee to replace former Justice Antonin Scalia.
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