WASHINGTON—The Senate is poised to vote on one of President Barack Obama’s judicial nominees — for a court in Tennessee.
Amid the election-year fight over filling the vacancy on the Supreme Court, the Senate is moving ahead on the nomination of Waverly Crenshaw to be U.S. district judge for the Middle District of Tennessee, a position that has been vacant since December 2014. The court has declared a “judicial emergency” because of the number of pending cases there.
The vote is scheduled for Monday evening.
Crenshaw has the support of Tennessee’s Republican senators, Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker, who have been pushing Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to schedule a vote as Republicans and Democrats have clashed over whether Obama or his successor should fill the Supreme Court opening.
Obama nominated Judge Merrick Garland last month to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia, but Republicans have insisted on no hearings and no vote until the next president. The last time the Senate voted on a judicial nomination was Feb. 11, just two days before Scalia’s death.
Crenshaw’s expected confirmation may be among the last in Obama’s presidency. In recent decades, the Senate has slowed — and gradually stopped — its approval of judges nominated by a president of the opposing party in the later months of a president’s final year in office.
Twenty-seven of Obama’s nominees to district courts and five to the appeals court remain in limbo.
Conservative groups have pushed McConnell to shut down the process entirely. A January memo from the advocacy group Heritage Action urged the Senate not to confirm any of Obama’s non-security nominees. “Granting any more lifetime appointments to federal judges whose views align with this president’s radical ideological agenda is indefensible,” the memo read.
Texas Sen. John Cornyn, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, said last month that he hoped the Senate would move on some nominations. But he acknowledged there won’t be any after the summer, as Obama wraps up his term and the presidential election gears up.
If he is confirmed, Crenshaw will be the 17th federal judge confirmed by the Senate since January 2015, when Republicans assumed control of the Senate. Obama nominated Crenshaw, a Nashville attorney, in February 2015 after the seat became vacant in December 2014.
In addition to the Tennessee senators, Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey, a Republican who is facing a tough re-election in November, has asked for votes. Toomey wrote Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley earlier this year and urged the Iowa Republican to move two district judge nominees whom he is supporting.
“These nominations unfortunately still remain pending before your committee, and I want to again urge you to bring these nominees up for a vote,” Toomey wrote in a Feb. 19 letter.
Two other Pennsylvania district court nominees backed by Toomey and the state’s other senator, Democrat Bob Casey, are awaiting a Senate vote.
Democrats are expected to use the vote on Crenshaw to accuse Republicans of hypocricy as they block the Supreme Court nominee but allow votes on other federal judges.
“Because of Republican sloth, judicial emergencies have nearly tripled, leaving our courts overworked and Americans without prompt access to our judicial system,” Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said of the remaining vacancies.
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