On Wednesday, the Senate voted to confirm two more judicial nominees and increased the number of female district court judges serving on the federal bench. Miranda Du was confirmed 59-39 to a seat on the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada, and Susie Morgan was confirmed 96-1 to serve on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.
Du is the first Asian Pacific American to serve as an Article III judge in Nevada. Her family fled Vietnam when she was nine years old and settled in the United States. Du achieved a successful civil litigation career, becoming one of the Mountain States Rising Stars in 2009 and a partner at her firm, McDonald Carano Wilson. She is a symbol of the American success story for many and is a part of the growing Asian Pacific American population in Nevada, now 9 percent of the state’s population.
Incidentally, the first Vietnamese-American Article III judge in U.S. history is now poised to become the first Asian Pacific American woman to serve on a U.S. court of appeals – if she ever receives a Senate vote. Jacqueline Nguyen was nominated to the Ninth Circuit in September and has been ready for a Senate vote for over three months in order to fill a seat considered a judicial emergency. Nguyen is currently joined by Patty Shwartz and Stephanie Dawn Thacker, nominees to the Third and Fourth Circuits, on the Senate floor.
The Senate’s confirmation of female court of appeals nominees lags far behind their male counterparts – only 9 of Obama’s female circuit court nominees have been confirmed out of 26 total. The Senate’s future confirmation of Nguyen, Shwartz, and Thacker would increase the number of female judges on three circuit courts and improve women’s representation overall on the nation’s federal appellate courts.