The nomination of Adeel Mangi to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals was supposed to be a crowning moment for President Joe Biden’s efforts to reshape the federal judiciary. Not only would Mangi maintain the 3rd Circuit’s ideological balance, but he would also make history as the first-ever Muslim to sit on a U.S. Circuit Court.
But it was not to be. More than a year after he was chosen, Mangi’s nomination looks like it’s unsalvageable, several people close to the process have told the New Jersey Globe; a critical handful of Democratic senators remain implacably opposed to Mangi, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer made a deal with Republicans last week essentially ceding Mangi and three other circuit court nominees in exchange for confirming more district court judges.
That means that once Donald Trump becomes president again and Republicans take control of the Senate in January, conservatives will be able to fill the seat, held until last year by Obama appointee Joseph Greenaway, with a nominee of their choosing. The court currently has six judges appointed by Democrats and seven appointed by Republicans, so Trump’s choice for the seat will shift the Third Circuit more firmly into conservative control.
All in all, it’s a mess for Biden and for Senate Democrats, who had nearly two years to figure out a solution for Greenaway’s seat and never came up with one. And since the Third Circuit is the second-highest federal judicial authority overseeing New Jersey’s laws behind only the U.S. Supreme Court, the policy implications of their failure could be vast.
Mangi, a Pakistan-born New Jersey resident and a partner at the law firm Patterson Belknap with a focus on religious freedom issues, was nominated in November of last year to fill the New Jersey seat left behind by Greenaway, who retired in June 2023 after 27 years on the federal bench. (The Third Circuit consists of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, but four of its seats – one of them being Greenaway’s – are generally reserved for New Jerseyans.) Now 47, Mangi had never been anywhere near the national spotlight before his nomination.
That changed in a big way when Mangi came before the Senate Judiciary Committee for two fraught hearings in December 2023 and January 2024. At both hearings, Republicans interrogated Mangi over his role on an advisory board for the Center for Security, Race and Rights at Rutgers Law School, a controversial group that they said had become an antisemitic, anti-American hotbed under Mangi’s nose.
Top Senate Democrats, including Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin, defended Mangi from the attacks, noting that his role at the center was a limited one and accusing Republicans of using Islamophobia to sink Mangi’s history-making nomination. But three Democratic senators – Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen and West Virginia’s Joe Manchin – came out publicly against Mangi, which in such a closely divided Senate was enough to deny him the votes needed for confirmation.
Their opposition put Mangi into limbo – a limbo which has lasted for more than eight months.
It wasn’t for lack of trying on the part of Schumer and New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, the two senators most closely involved in Mangi’s nomination. Booker has been Mangi’s loudest and most unwavering proponent in the Senate, and said in a statement provided to the Globe that he continues to support Mangi even now.
“Adeel Mangi represents the best of New Jersey,” Booker said in a statement. “He is a person of integrity and deep conviction with an unflinching commitment to fairness and equality. An accomplished lawyer, Adeel has secured landmark victories for the people he has represented. I have the utmost faith in his ability to serve the people of New Jersey and our country fairly and impartially on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. As long as he remains a nominee, I will fight to get him confirmed.”
But Booker’s tireless efforts on Mangi’s behalf have not been enough to convince the Democratic holdouts to backtrack and give Mangi a second chance. (It probably didn’t help that Booker’s fellow senator for much of the process, now-former Senator Bob Menendez, was distracted by his own legal issues and wasn’t around to provide much assistance.)
And by now, it’s too late to change course and salvage the seat for Democrats. Had Biden, Schumer, and Booker begun working on finding an alternate nominee last spring, when Mangi’s nomination first ran into trouble, it may have been possible to push that nominee through in time and preserve liberal representation on the Third Circuit. But with only a few weeks left to go until control of the Senate turns over to Republicans, that window has closed.
(The process to nominate Mangi in the first place burned up precious months, too. Greenaway announced his intention to retire on February 7, 2023, but Biden didn’t name Mangi to his seat until November 15 – nine months of time Democrats likely wish they could get back now that the nomination has faltered.)
The deal Schumer reportedly made last week with incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune provided confirmation of what was already clear: Mangi’s nomination almost certainly can’t be saved, and there is not nearly enough time to push forward someone else instead.
Once Trump returns to the White House, he will presumably make his own nomination to Greenaway’s seat – and since it’s a Circuit Court seat, Booker and Senator-elect Andy Kim won’t have as much ability to slow his nominee down as they would for a district court seat. Assuming Trump’s nominee is confirmed by the GOP-controlled Senate, the new balance of the Third Circuit will be eight Republican appointees to six Democratic appointees, the same balance that the court had prior to Biden’s presidency.
That shift could be hugely important if and when New Jersey, where Democrats have full control of state government, tries to pass liberal legislation in defiance of Trump and the conservative U.S. Supreme Court. New Jersey has repeatedly sparred with the federal judiciary over the state’s strict gun control laws; the ideological composition of the Third Circuit could have major implications for gun policy and for other future legal battles that have yet to emerge.
On the New Jersey District Court, the legacy of Biden, Booker, and Menendez is an impressive one. After Booker and Menendez blocked Trump from making any district court appointments during his first administration, Biden was able to fill ten of the state’s 17 federal district judgeships, making history several times in the process (including with Zahid Quraishi, the first Muslim federal judge in the country).
But the Mangi debacle is a stain on that legacy – one that Democrats in New Jersey and in the U.S. Senate may be regretting for a long time to come.