Could New Jersey’s federal district court soon get the chance to expand?

In 2023, the Judicial Conference of the United States – a conference of federal judges who convene twice a year – recommended the creation of dozens of new federal judgeships nationwide to ease the case backlog in many of the country’s busiest courts. “Judges work tirelessly every day to meet growing demands and resolve cases as quickly as possible, but with the volume we have and the shortage of judges we have, it just makes it a very difficult proposition,” one Florida judge said last month.

To address the backlog, a bipartisan group of senators and representatives proposed a bill, the Judicial Understaffing Delays Getting Emergencies Solved (JUDGES) Act, that would create 66 additional district judgeships staggered over the course of a decade. Three of those judges would hail from the District of New Jersey, which currently has 17 judges; one new seat would be created in 2025, a second in 2031, and a third in 2035.

But with Donald Trump set to return to the White House in a month, what had previously been a bipartisan endeavor has now begun to break down on partisan lines. Although the Judges Act has passed both houses of Congress, President Joe Biden has vowed to veto the bill – so New Jersey will have to wait a while longer before its judicial footprint has the opportunity to expand.

The Judges Act was first introduced this April, a year after the Judicial Conference made its recommendations, by a bipartisan group of eight senators who said that their own local district courts were in need of more manpower. A few months after its introduction, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker signed on as a co-sponsor.

“Too many Americans are being denied access to our justice system due to an overload of cases and a shortage of judges,” Senator Todd Young (R-Indiana), the bill’s top sponsor, said in a statement at the time. “These judicial emergencies are affecting Indiana and a number of other states across the country. Our bipartisan bill will help address this shortage and ensure all Americans have the opportunity to have their day in court.”

It was in that bipartisan spirit that the bill passed the Senate by unanimous consent in August, with no senator objecting to its passage. But that was when the presidential election between Trump and Kamala Harris was still undecided, meaning that the political implications of the bill weren’t yet known; either party could have theoretically stood to benefit from an influx of new open judgeships.

Now the picture is much clearer, and Democrats are acting accordingly. When the Judges Act came before the House last week, it passed 236-173, with every Democrat from New Jersey voting no. And since Biden has said he’ll veto the bill – he said in a statement that it is “unnecessary to the efficient and effective administration of justice” – its proponents will have to wait until next Congress, when Republicans will have a government trifecta, to get another shot at expanding the judiciary.

During Trump’s first term as president, Booker and then-Senator Bob Menendez used Senate procedures to prevent him from filling any of New Jersey’s district judgeships, even those that had been vacant for years. The state’s current District Court, therefore, is composed almost entirely of Democratic-appointed judges; ten judges were put on the court by Biden, five by Barack Obama, and two by George W. Bush (one of whom, Renée Marie Bumb, is the court’s chief judge).

The consequences to New Jersey’s federal judiciary of adding a single new judgeship that Trump would get the opportunity to fill, then, wouldn’t necessarily be earth-shaking, especially if Booker and new Senator Andy Kim team up to foil any ultra-conservative nominees. And the other two New Jersey judgeships that the bill would add in 2031 and 2035 could, in theory, be filled by Democratic presidents if Democrats win the 2028 and 2032 presidential elections.

But, of course, the bill’s reach extends far beyond New Jersey; Trump would be given the ability to name 22 additional judges overall during his coming term, 11 in 2025 and another 11 in 2027.

It’s not yet known whether Republicans will try to resurrect the bill next session; both Kim and Booker, who remains a co-sponsor of the bill, declined to comment on what they’d do if it comes up again under a Trump presidency. (Kim, who was sworn into the Senate just last week, has never had to take a public position on the bill at all, since it passed the Senate before he arrived there and came up in the House a few days after he left.)

Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing), who was among the many House Democrats to vote against the bill last week, was blunt about why she thought Democrats should oppose it.

“I’m not giving this incoming president any more opportunities to abuse the authority of his office,” she said.