US House passes bill to expand judiciary despite Biden veto threat

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill on Thursday to add 66 new judges to understaffed federal courts nationally, a bill that outgoing Democratic President Joe Biden has threatened to veto.

Lawmakers only took up the measure after Republican President-elect Donald Trump won the November election.

The Republican-led House voted 236-173 in favor of legislation the Democratic-led Senate passed earlier this year that would result in the first major expansion of the federal judiciary since 1990.

The bipartisan bill, once widely supported, would increase the number of trial court judges in 25 federal district courts in 13 states including California, Florida and Texas in six waves every two years through 2035.

Hundreds of judges have taken the rare step of publicly advocating for the JUDGES Act, saying federal caseloads have increased more than 30% since Congress last passed legislation to comprehensively expand the judiciary. And the bill received a unanimous vote in the Senate in August.

But that was before the results of the Nov. 5 presidential election were known. Democratic lawmakers have accused House Republicans of holding up a vote on the bill until they knew Trump would emerge the victor and get the chance to name the first 25 judges.

The White House on Tuesday noted the delay as one of the reasons Biden planned to veto the bill if the House passed it. A White House spokesperson reaffirmed Biden's plans to veto the bill following the vote, which garnered support from only 29 House Democrats.

"This should not be a political issue - it should be about prioritizing the needs of the American people and ensuring the courts are able to deliver fair, impartial, and timely justice," Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said in a statement.

U.S. District Judge Robert Conrad, the director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, said in a statement the measure if enacted "would improve access to justice in the federal courts and improve judicial administration."

But U.S. Representative Jerrold Nadler, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said that by not taking up the measure pre-election, House Republican leaders had broken a central promise to have lawmakers approve the bill when no one knew who would get to appoint the initial wave of judges.

He accused Republicans of playing "political games" with what should have been a bipartisan bill and said he could not endorse allowing Trump to appoint more "ultra-conservative ideologues" to the bench.

Trump is already expected to be able to appoint 100-plus judges over his four-year term. He made 234 appointments to the federal judiciary in his first term, including three members of the U.S. Supreme Court's 6-3 conservative majority.

Biden is nearing Trump's total, with 233 so far including one Supreme Court justice, and the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday advanced the nominations of two final nominees out of California for the full Senate's consideration.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by David Gregorio, Alexia Garamfalvi and Rod Nickel)