The U.S. Senate on Friday confirmed the first federal trial judges in California under President Joe Biden, sending a former public defender and a former consumer protection prosecutor to the Southern District in San Diego and a former corporate counsel and civil litigator to the Central District in Los Angeles. A fourth confirmation occurred shortly before midnight Eastern time.

Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on October 20, 2021. Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM

Senators voted 48-25 to confirm Linda Lopez, who's been a magistrate judge since 2018 after 11 years as a federal public defender, and 47-24 to confirm Jinsook Ohta, a San Diego County Superior Court judge and former deputy attorney general. They also voted 46-24 to confirm Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge, to the Central District, then late Friday night voted 46-24 to confirm U.S. Magistrate Judge Jennifer Thurston to the Eastern District bench.

The confirmations follow years of dire judge shortages that have repeatedly been decried in the legal community and beyond. In June, 38 of California's Democratic U.S. representatives signed a letter urging Biden to take action. California's four districts have had judicial emergencies in place over the vacancies, which some say don't properly reflect the true case overload because the number of judgeships hasn't kept pace with district population growth. The Eastern District, for example, has not added a judgeship since 1978, though its population has swelled from 2.5 million residents to approximately 8 million.

Introducing the nominees, California Senator Alex Padilla said the judicial nominations under the prior administration, "let me put it mildly here — were far from diverse, far from representative of our nation."

"And as a result, the federal courts and those who sit on the federal bench do not reflect the diverse, vibrant America that it serves. And I'm not just talking about gender. I'm not just talking about race and ethnicity," Padilla said. "For too long, the bench of our federal courts has been dominated by corporate lawyers and former prosecutors."

Padilla said the federal bench need more judges with backgrounds in public defense, consumer protection, public interest, immigration, labor and local government

"We need all these perspectives in order to rebalance our federal courts and hopefully in the process rebuild and reaffirm public confidence in the fairness of their rulings," Padilla said.