Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On The Senate Continuing To Confirm Diverse And Qualified Federal Judges

Washington, D.C. –  Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor on the vote to confirm Camille Velez-Rive to serve as District Judge for Puerto Rico and Anne Nardacci to serve as District Judge for the Northern District of New York. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks: 

Later today the Senate will vote to confirm two highly-qualified and talented public servants to serve as lifetime appointments to the federal bench: Camille Velez-Rive to serve as District Judge for Puerto Rico, and Anne Nardacci to serve as District Judge for the Northern District of New York.

An Albany native and one of the first women who would sit on the bench in that district, Anne Nardacci represents upstate New York perfectly. She's the kind of bread and butter candidate that upstate New Yorkers like, and she’s built a career on taking on special interests. So people in the Northern District of New York will not have to worry that she won't represent them, when others come before the court who are special and powerful but don't have the right arguments.

For the last two years, one of my top priorities has been making sure we restore a sense of balance, impartiality, and experience to the federal bench—and now that Democrats will keep our majority in the next Congress that will continue unabated.

We have made historic progress so far: in the last two years we have confirmed 85 judges to the federal bench, the best pace since the Clinton Administration.

And those eighty-five judges comprise perhaps the most diverse collection of new jurists we have ever seen: seventy-five percent of these new judges are women, I’m so proud of that. Two-thirds are people of color, I’m so proud of that. And many of them come from professional backgrounds we rarely see in judicial nominees – I’m proud of that as well.

But we are not yet done. We are going to hit the ground running when the New Year begins, and our democracy will unquestionably be better off for it.

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