U.W. Clemon, former chief judge of the US District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, has insisted the president skip over Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, said to be one of his leading picks after Biden promised he would name a black female judge to the Supreme Court to replace retiring liberal Justice Stephen Breyer.
Clemon explained that while there were “several exceptionally well-qualified black female aspirants for the Supreme Court,” Jackson was not one of them. He referenced a class-action lawsuit Ross v. Lockheed, explaining that Jackson had presided over the suit on behalf of 5,500 black employees of US military contractor Lockheed Martin. When a settlement was reached that would have given the workers $22 million, Jackson, he said, refused to approve it. Clemon’s firm, which represented the workers, lost the case.
The Biden administration defended Jackson after Clemon advised against hiring her, insisting that it was Jackson’s “experience in roles at all levels of the justice system, her character, and her legal brilliance” that led Biden to appoint the former public defender to the DC Circuit Court. The president was “very proud of that decision,” according to a deputy press secretary.
Biden has reportedly narrowed down the possibilities for his SCOTUS pick to just four judges, all black women, but he has not named which specific individuals made it to this last round.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has urged him to hurry up and name Breyer’s successor lest the Republican Party attempt to throw a monkey wrench into the proceedings, as they have with certain other of Biden’s nominees and as the Democrats did in kind with Trump’s SCOTUS nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
Biden has insisted he plans to name his pick by the end of February.