Justice Julia Lipez presides over an attempted murder trial at Oxford County Superior Court in 2022. Andree Kehn/Sun Journal
A group of U.S. senators has agreed not to vote on a Maine judge’s nomination to a federal appeals court.
Julia Lipez, a superior court justice for Maine courts in Augusta, was nominated in May by President Biden to join the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, which considers cases from Maine and other New England states.
She’s one of four appellate nominees that senators agreed not to confirm, as part of a deal Democrats reached with Republicans so they can quickly confirm seven to 13 other nominees before the change in administration, according to reporting by The Washington Post.
A spokesperson for the White House did not respond to emails Friday morning seeking a response from Biden or any information on whether the administration will pursue Lipez’s confirmation.
In response to questions about who President-elect Donald Trump might nominate for the post, his transition team said in an email that during his first term, “Trump appointed constitutionalist judges who interpret the law as written. He will do so again.”
Lipez became a superior court justice in 2022 and is serving a seven-year term.
Before that, she was a prosecutor with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maine and a private lawyer at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP in New York. She also clerked for a federal appellate judge in New York in 2006, after receiving her law degree from Stanford Law School.
Her father, Kermit V. Lipez, has also been serving on the 1st Circuit court.
Lipez, like most of Biden’s other nominees to the court, faced heat from Republicans during a committee confirmation hearing this summer, where they questioned whether her sentencing had been light. But she was also lauded by other lawyers and legal officials in Maine, who cited her anti-trafficking work in the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The committee later voted along party lines to endorse her confirmation to the rest of the Senate (which has been common for Biden’s nominees.)
“It’s very partisan and very politicized now,” said University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias, who closely follows judicial nominations. “It all became much worse during Trump’s tenure, the first time, and it’s only accelerated once Biden beat Trump.”
Tobias said in a phone interview Friday that Maine’s U.S. senators will likely play a huge role in offering potential 1st Circuit nominees to Trump.
Sen. Angus King, an independent, told the committee during a June hearing that support for her nomination to become a Maine judge was bipartisan.
His office said in an email Friday that King “finds it hard to believe that highly-qualified and fair-minded judicial nominee like Julia Lipez couldn’t gain any degree of bipartisan support” in the Senate.
“When Senate Republicans began unfairly attacking her record, it was immediately clear they were creating a pretext to block her at all costs,” wrote spokesperson Matthew Felling. “Senator King doubts there will be a nominee put forward by the incoming administration of Justice Lipez’s caliber.”
Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican, has not taken any position on Lipez’s nomination, according to her spokesperson Annie Clark.
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