President Joe Biden announced his intention to nominate North Carolina Solicitor General Ryan Park to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, despite objections from the state’s two Republican senators. Alongside Park, Biden named three new candidates for trial court judges in Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. If confirmed, Park will become the first Asian American judge on the Richmond, Virginia-based appeals court.
These four nominations face a tight timeline for Senate confirmation in an election year. With a narrow 51-49 Democratic majority, many Republicans have vowed not to support Biden’s nominees. In a joint statement, North Carolina Republican Senators Thom Tillis and Ted Budd called Park’s nomination a “non-starter” and claimed that “the White House has already been informed they do not have the votes for confirmation.”
Senate Democrats have upheld a practice from former President Donald Trump’s tenure, requiring senators to return “blue slips” only for district court nominees and not appellate court ones. However, opposition from Tillis and Budd could complicate Park’s confirmation. Park has served under Democratic North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein since 2017 and has been the state’s solicitor general since 2020.
A Harvard Law School graduate, Park clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter. Before joining the North Carolina Department of Justice, he worked as an associate at Boies Schiller Flexner. As North Carolina’s top appellate lawyer, he argued on behalf of the University of North Carolina in a U.S. Supreme Court case challenging the consideration of race in student admissions. In 2023, the conservative majority of the court ruled against UNC and Harvard, curtailing affirmative action practices.
Biden also nominated Byron Conway, a shareholder at the law firm Habush, Habush & Rottier in Green Bay, to the Eastern District of Wisconsin. While Republican Senator Ron Johnson previously refused to turn in a blue slip for another Biden nominee, William Pocan, in 2022, Conway received recommendations from both Johnson and Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin.
In the Central District of Illinois, Biden nominated U.S. Magistrate Judge Jonathan Hawley, a former public defender, to a life-tenured district court position. In the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Biden selected Judge Gail Weilheimer of the Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas as a district court judge.
