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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowMagistrate Judge Doris Pryor of the Southern Indiana District Court is scheduled to appear Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee for her confirmation hearing to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The hearing is scheduled to start at 10 a.m. Pryor will be appearing in the first panel with Roopali Desai, the nominee for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Typically, committee members vote on the nominees about two weeks after the hearings. If Pryor is approved by the committee, her nomination will be sent to the full Senate for a confirmation vote.
The Senate is scheduled to work through the first week of August, so Pryor could be confirmed in less than a month. Otherwise, any possible confirmation vote likely will not come until after Labor Day.
Pryor was nominated May 25 by the Biden administration for the seat that will be created when Judge David Hamilton takes senior status later this year.
In her responses to the judiciary committee questionnaire, Pryor stated she was initially contacted about the 7th Circuit vacancy Jan. 24 by Sen. Mike Braun’s office. The next day she met the Indiana Republican’s staff member, and the day after that, Sen. Todd Young contacted her to ask if she was interested in being considered for the nomination.
On Jan. 27, she was contacted by the White House Counsel’s Office, and a day later, she met with attorneys from that office. Since that time, Pryor stated she has been in contact with officials from the Office of Legal Policy at the U.S. Department of Justice.
Young announced his support for Pryor on the day her nomination was announced. However, Braun stopped short of endorsing her elevation to the circuit court, saying he looked forward to “carefully considering the qualifications, legal record and judicial philosophy of Magistrate Judge Doris Pryor… .”
Braun did not respond by IL deadline to a question about whether he had changed his position on Pryor’s nomination.
If confirmed, Pryor will be the third nominee and the third minority President Joe Biden has sent to the 7th Circuit. Also, she will be the first Black woman from Indiana to sit on the Chicago-based appellate court.
Judge Candance Jackson-Akiwumi was confirmed in June 2021 to fill Senior Judge Joel Flaum’s seat, and Northern Illinois District Court Judge John Z. Lee is awaiting a vote by the Senate on his nomination to fill the seat held by Judge Diane Wood.
John Collins, visiting associate professor at the George Washington University Law School, noted even with Pryor’s confirmation, the majority of judges on the 7th Circuit have been appointed by conservative presidents, so a broad change in rulings or judicial philosophy is unlikely.
However, the potential three Biden judges would bring different perspectives that current judges might not have not considered, Collins said. While the veteran judges would probably not completely change their minds, hearing the reasonings and opinions of their new colleagues could cause them to narrow the scope of their rulings.
“I think that can go a long way to making litigants feel like, ‘I was heard. There was somebody up there who has represented somebody like me or who looks like me or who comes from a background like me,’” he said, noting that even if the litigant does not win, having a diverse bench “can build faith that the system is fair and working justly.”
Pryor was born in Hope, Arkansas and graduated from Indiana University Maurer School of Law in 2003. She clerked for the Chief Judge Lavenski Smith of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals and for Judge J. Leon Holmes of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas.
She has spent her entire career in public service. That includes about a year as a deputy public defender on the Arkansas Public Defender Commission before returning to Indiana to join the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Indiana. She served as an assistant U.S. attorney then as national security chief for the office.
Pryor was appointed as a magistrate judge in 2018.
As part of her responses to the judiciary committee, Pryor listed the 10 most significant cases she has presided over. The list included Mitchum v. City of Indianapolis, 1:19-cv-2277, and Barnhouse v. City of Muncie, 1:19-cv-00958.
The former focused on constitutional issues brought by a man who was bitten by a police dog and held in his backyard. Pryor granted in part and denied in part the defendants’ motion for summary judgment, and while the case was being appealed, the parties reached a settlement.
The latter involved a man who was exonerated 25 years after being convicted of rape. Pryor presided over an all-day settlement in which the parties were able to reach an agreement.
Also, she told the committee she had recused herself from cases involving Indiana University. She noted that prior to 2021, her husband was employed by IU.
Her responses also highlighted her work in the Re-entry and Community Help, or REACH, program and her work overseeing the Southern Indiana District Court’s summer internship program in Indianapolis.
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