In the last Congress, judicial appointments were a point of contention between Republicans and the White House, and a new round of gridlock may be breaking out again.
According to Roll Call, the Senate Judiciary Committee has been stalling on the confirmation of L. Felipe Restrepo, an appointee nominated by the president six months ago for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
The seat has been open for 18 months, causing a caseload backlog for Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware so severe that it has been declared a "judicial emergency."
The Senate Judiciary Committee is convening its third hearing of the year on Wednesday to hear from nominees but Restrepo is not invited.
"This is just slow-walking a totally qualified nominee," Kyle Barry of the Alliance for Justice, which advocates for a more liberal judiciary, told Roll Call. "There's no substantive reason, and it's unconscionable."
Liberal advocacy groups and some Democrats believe that the hold on Restrepo could be the latest act of retribution for the president's decision to impose an executive order on immigration last fall.
"There is little risk of the public outrage that might accompany a DHS shutdown or even a fight over a Cabinet nominee," Curt Levey of the conservative Committee for Justice legal think tank
wrote in The Wall Street Journal recently.
"Nonetheless, denying Mr. Obama the power to shape these all-important circuit courts would give Republicans nearly as much leverage as a broader approach," he added. "If Republican senators stick together, this is a no-lose strategy. Either the president relents by rescinding or substantially modifying his immigration orders, or Republicans halt his leftward transformation of the circuit courts and keep judicial vacancies open for a possible GOP president in 2017."
But aides for Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley deny that the delay is political.
According to Roll Call they say that the committee is still reviewing the latest background check, though Roll Call points out that Restrepo already received a thorough review two years ago by the FBI before he was confirmed for his current position as a federal trial court judge in Philadelphia.
"You can see by the numbers that there is no strategy," spokeswoman Beth Levine said. She recited statistics showing that the GOP pace of confirming judges at this point during a presidency was comparable to the Democrats' pace when President George W. Bush was in his seventh year of office.
Restrepo is a originally from Colombia. He came to the United States as a child and became a citizen in 1993. He would be the second Latino ever on the Third Circuit, Roll Call said.
"Restrepo might still end up as a symbol of the immigrant success story and a reminder that the poor oftentimes benefit from good court-appointed lawyers. Or he could become the latest high-profile victim of partisan brinkmanship in the shaping of the judicial branch. This early in the year, it's still too early to predict," Roll Call concluded.
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