The U.S. Senate on Monday confirmed Bradley Garcia, a lawyer in the U.S. Justice Department, as the first Latino to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Garcia, 37, will be President Joe Biden’s fourth appointee to the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., often considered the second-most important federal court in the United States after the U.S. Supreme Court. He was confirmed on a 53-40 vote, which was mostly along party lines with three Republicans, Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voting in favor of the nomination.
He will join the court from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. Garcia joined the administration last year from law firm O’Melveny & Myers, where he was a partner in the appellate and Supreme Court practice.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor Monday that Garcia’s confirmation “is a long overdue step towards making the federal bench better reflect our country.”
The White House announced Garcia’s nomination in June 2022. He faced questions from senators during a July 2022 hearing about his level of experience, and about his work on a Supreme Court case that successfully challenged restrictions Louisiana had placed on doctors providing abortions.
Garcia marks the Senate’s first judicial confirmation since Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California, returned to Washington on Wednesday. Feinstein, 89, had been absent since being hospitalized with shingles in early March.
Her return restored Senate Democrats’ slim majority in the chamber to 51 votes.
Biden had previously appointed now-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to the D.C. Circuit, where she spent less than a year before being nominated to the Supreme Court. He also placed Circuit Judges Michelle Childs and Florence Pan on the influential appeals court.