Today, Wednesday, November 20, President Trump further cemented his reform of the federal judiciary when the US Senate confirmed yet another of the President’s picks to a federal circuit court seat Wednesday in a vote that tilts the balance of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to a GOP-appointed majority. The 11th Circuit is now the third court to undergo such a transformation during Trump’s presidency.
With an 80-15 vote, the Senate confirmed Barbara Lagoa to the seat formerly held by Judge Stanley Marcus, a Clinton appointee who sat on the appeals court that handles cases from Florida, Georgia and Alabama since 1997.
Several years ago, when this writer lived and practiced law in the Miami area and was a member of the Board of the Miami Lawyers Chapter of The Federalist Society, he met and chatted with Judge Lagoa, who was at that time a judge on a Florida intermediate appellate court. She had recently authored an unusually well-reasoned opinion on a critical issue and I was pleased to compliment her on it (not actually groveling too much since I did very little appellate work)- she was very gracious, even-tempered, and a regular at the meetings of The Federalist Society, although I have no idea whether she was a card-carrying member of that organization. Regardless, she was apparently very sympathetic toward the principles of The Federalist Society, of which this writer continues to be a member.
Lagoa, the first Cuban-American woman confirmed to the 11th Circuit, tilts that court, which was previously split between six Republican appointees and six Democratic appointees, to a GOP-appointed majority. Trump’s nominees alone now hold five of the 12 seats on the 11th Circuit.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell foreshadowed the development in a speech at the annual convention for the Federalist Society, a conservative and libertarian lawyers’ organization, last week. He boasted about Trump and the GOP-controlled Senate flipping both the 3rd Circuit and the 2nd Circuit — which he had just completed earlier that day with the confirmation of controversial nominee Steven Menashi to the 2nd Circuit — while vowing to make judicial confirmations a priority.
McConnell and Trump have made a point of filling federal courts, from the Supreme Court on down to district courts. This has been especially true since Democrats took control of the House of Representatives in the 2018 elections, shrinking the Senate’s legislative agenda significantly. McConnell used a similar line in an appearance at a Federalist Society event in Kentucky last month alongside Don McGahn, the former White House counsel who guided the nominations of Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Justice Neil Gorsuch.
“The reason we’ve done all these circuit judges and will ultimately do all the district judges is because it’s my top priority,” he said. “You want to have an impact on the country, there are not many things that we do that cannot be undone by the next election…. But there’s not much you can do about a young strict constructionist who’s committed for a lifetime to the quaint notion that maybe the job of a judge is to follow the law.”
We have flipped the 2nd Circuit, the 3rd Circuit, and we will flip the 11th circuit,” Josh Blackman, a Texas law professor who attended the convention, paraphrased McConnell as saying. “My motto: leave no vacancy behind.” [emphasis added]
With the confirmation of Judge Barbara Lagoa to the Eleventh Circuit, President Trump has now transformed three of the nation’s federal appellate courts from Democrat-appointed majorities to Republican-appointed majorities. This is a major achievement for his presidency.
Lagoa’s confirmation came on the heels of 64-31 vote confirming Robert J. Luck to the 11th Circuit Tuesday. The 40-year-old Luck replaces Gerald Bard Tjoflat, an 89-year-old Gerald Ford appointee. [Judge Tjoflat, from Jacksonville, was a very long serving state judge before being elevated to the federal bench. He was known for his tough questioning of lawyers in oral arguments, and [full transparency] this writer once suffered the brunt of such questioning from him at an oral argument- ultimately the 3-judge panel of which he was a part reversed my summary judgment obtained in the District Court- but, oh well, that’s the breaks.]
Lagoa was Trump’s 48th nominee confirmed to a circuit court seat, which is about double the number of circuit judges then-President Barack Obama had gotten through by the same point in his presidency, according to a count by the Heritage Foundation. Lagoa is Trump’s 164th confirmation to the federal bench overall.
