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Chief Judge Virginia A. Phillips, United States District Court for the Central District of California.

So Many Judges, But Still So Many Vacancies

Even as President Donald Trump has pushed through judicial nominees, some district courts are struggling to keep up with their current caseload due to vacancies.

There are currently 73 vacancies for Article III courts, and Trump has already made nominations for 31 of those seats, according to the conservative Article III Project's judiciary tracker.

The majority of the vacancies are in blue states—which means Democratic senators will have to work with the Trump White House to find nominees that have both sides' support, as Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham hasn't suggested he'll toss the blue-slip rule for district court nominees the way Senate Republicans have for circuit court seats.

California leads the way with the most current at 16. Nine of those are in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, five are at the Southern District and two for the Eastern District.

The California vacancies have sparked calls for action by judges on those courts. Chief U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips of the Central District of California called the vacancies a "grave danger" and "crisis of unprecedented magnitude" in a late October letter to White House counsel Pat Cipollone, as well as Sens. Lindsey Graham, Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris.

Days earlier, Chief U.S. District Judge Lawrence O'Neill of the Eastern District of California wrote a similar letter to Cipollone, Feinstein and Harris, saying he wanted to "prevent an impending, acute, and judicial catastrophe."

Trump has since tapped a slate of judicial nominees for the empty California seats—but still none for the Eastern District.

O'Neill took senior status last month, more than a year after he announced his retirement, leaving U.S. District Judge Dale Drozd as the only trial judge in the Fresno courthouse. Drozd soon issued two standing orders saying he would stop scheduling new civil trials, and those already planned are unlikely to proceed on time.

"These are uncharted waters for this court," Drozd wrote in the orders. "The emergency procedures announced above are being implemented reluctantly. They are not, in the undersigned's view, conducive to the fair administration of justice. However, the court has been placed in an untenable position in which it simply has no choice."

The Western District of Washington is also struggling with five vacancies on the court. That's left seven judges on that bench, and five of them still hearing cases have senior status, Chief Judge Ricardo Martinez told Roll Call.

The two remaining active judges are also eligible for senior status. "We're both fully eligible to take senior status, but if we do there's nobody left," Martinez, 68, told Roll Call.

On the other side of the country, the U.S. District Court for New Jersey has six vacancies, and Trump hasn't tapped anyone to fill those seats. That leaves 11 active judges sitting on that bench across three courthouses.

Chief District Judge Freda Wilson has previously floated the possibility of bringing in out-of-state judges to help handle the court's docket.

Even if all current vacancies in the nation were filed, the judiciary says it still wouldn't have enough judgeships to handle the current load of cases. The Administrative Office of the Courts last year called for the creation of 65 new judgeships in courts across the U.S.

What We're Reading

>> Trump Appointee Neomi Rao Has Some Strong Opinions. Even Her GOP-Tapped Colleague Disagrees. "A Trump appointee, Rao has found her arguments knocked by colleagues from both sides of the aisle: By a Clinton appointee in Mazars (an Obama appointee joined that opinion) and in the grand jury case by both Bush and Clinton appointees. Rao wrote that the D.C. Circuit's recent ruling on former White House counsel Don McGahn's testimony…meant the committee also could not ask the court to compel the Justice Department to hand over the grand jury information redacted from special counsel Robert Mueller III's report….Judge Thomas Griffith—who wrote the majority opinion on McGahn—released a concurring opinion aimed solely at countering claims raised by Rao." [National Law Journal]

>> Patterson Belknap Files Watchdog Lawsuit Over Trump's Secret Clemency Advisers: "Harry Sandick and Daniel Ruzumna of Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler filed the suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on behalf of the watchdog group, alleging the clemency advisers are violating the Federal Advisory Committee Act by not filing a charter, and by keeping their meetings and documents concealed from the public….'This lawsuit seeks to provide the public with information about the particular mechanism used by President Trump to receive advice and recommendations regarding the exercise of his power to grant executive clemency.'" [National Law Journal]

>> House Can Get Secret Grand Jury Information in Mueller Report, DC Circuit Rules: "Judge Judith Rogers wrote in the court's majority opinion affirming the district court that a Senate impeachment trial is a judicial proceeding, and that the committee established a particularized need for the redacted materials, pointing to the Constitution granting the House the 'sole power of impeachment.' Rogers rejected the DOJ's claims that past circuit rulings about grand jury information being released during an impeachment inquiry were incorrectly decided, calling the Justice Department's arguments 'foreclosed by our precedent' and 'unpersuasive.' 'It is only the president's categorical resistance and the department's objection that are unprecedented,' she wrote." [National Law Journal]

>> 'It Needed to Be Said': Wisconsin Federal Judge Defends His Article Slamming Roberts Court: "I mean, [Roberts] presides over the court. He's the leader. The decision where they said you can't have expanded Medicaid has caused really a lot of problems. I don't know how many states now, 18 states, that still haven't adopted Medicaid. People died because of that. I mean, that decision some way, the constitutional theory about discourse coercing the states came out of nowhere." [National Law Journal]

>> ACLU sues federal agencies seeking records of facial-recognition use at airports and U.S. border: "The Freedom of Information Act lawsuit asks a federal court to demand the agencies — the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection, the Transportation Security Administration, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement — hand over records related to the face-scanning software's expanding role in U.S. airports and along the border. ACLU attorneys wrote that the technology raises 'profound civil-liberties concerns' and 'can enable undetectable, persistent government surveillance on a massive scale.'" [Washington Post]

That's it for Trump Watch! Thanks for reading, I'll see you next week.