Biden nominates abortion rights lawyer in U.S. Supreme Court case to
federal judgeship
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[July 30, 2022]
By Nate Raymond
(Reuters) -President Joe Biden on Friday
nominated a lawyer who represented the Mississippi clinic at the heart
of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to overturn its landmark 1973 Roe
v. Wade abortion rights decision to become a federal appeals court
judge.
Biden's latest slate of nine new judicial nominees included Julie
Rikelman, an abortion rights lawyer with the Center for Reproductive
Rights whom the president picked to serve on the Boston-based 1st U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals.
The nomination, which Republicans are likely to oppose in the narrowly
Democratic-controlled Senate, came a month after the
conservative-majority Supreme Court overturned Roe, which for nearly
five decades had guaranteed women nationally a constitutional right to
obtain abortions.
Rikelman had argued against such a ruling in representing the Jackson
Women's Health Organization - Mississippi's only abortion clinic - in
challenging a Republican-backed law that banned abortion after 15 weeks
of pregnancy.
The clinic has since closed, after a near-total ban in Mississippi
sprang into effect following the decision by the United States' highest
court. About half of the 50 U.S. states have banned or are expected to
ban or restrict abortions following that ruling.
"Julie Rikelman brings exactly the kind of experience with reproductive
rights we desperately need on the courts," Christopher Kang, chief
counsel of the progressive group Demand Justice, said in a statement.
Conservative opposition is expected in the U.S. Senate, where Democrats
are facing pressure from progressive activists to speed up judicial
confirmations before the Nov. 8 midterm elections, when they risk losing
control of the chamber to Republicans.
"This nominee is a radical, left-wing abortion activist who has no
business being on any court, let alone a federal appellate court," said
Mike Davis, who heads the conservative judicial advocacy group the
Article III Project.
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Lawyer Julie Rickelman of the Center for Reproductive Rights speaks
during a protest outside the Supreme Court building, ahead of
arguments in the Mississippi abortion rights case Dobbs v. Jackson
Women's Health, in Washington, U.S., December 1, 2021.
REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Rikelman is one of two new appellate court nominees by Biden. He
also nominated Connecticut Supreme Court Justice Maria Araujo Kahn
to the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Biden's latest nominees continued the White House's push to
diversify the federal bench. They include Daniel Calabretta, a
California state court judge nominated to become the first openly
LGBT federal judge in the state's Eastern District.
Myong Joun, a state court judge in Boston, was picked to become the
first Asian American man on the federal bench in Massachusetts,
where Biden also nominated Julia Kobick, a deputy state solicitor in
the state attorney general's office.
District of Columbia Superior Court Judge Todd Edelman was nominated
to be a federal judge in Washington, and U.S. Bankruptcy Judge
Jeffery Hopkins would if confirmed by the Senate become a district
court judge in Southern Ohio.
Biden also nominated Araceli Martinez-Olguin of the National
Immigration Law Center and Superior Court Judge Rita Lin to be
federal judges in California's Northern District.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
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