Wait Is Over as Paez Wins Judicial Post

After enduring a record 1,506-day wait, U.S. District Judge Richard A. Paez of Los Angeles won Senate confirmation Thursday to the federal appeals court.

The surprisingly lopsided 59-to-39 vote ended a bitter partisan fight over the long-stalled nomination--one capped by Vice President Al Gore suspending his presidential campaign to stand by in the Capitol to cast a tie-breaking vote, if needed.

But Gore’s vote was not needed. Fourteen Republicans broke with Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and joined all 45 Senate Democrats in voting to confirm Paez as a member of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. San Francisco labor lawyer Marsha L. Berzon also was confirmed, on a 64-to-34 vote, for a seat on the appeals panel, which serves California and eight other Western states.

Gore did not miss the opportunity to celebrate the vote, declaring in Spanish, “Amigos, hoy finalmente hemos logrado justicia.” (“Friends, today we’ve finally achieved justice.”)

Paez, the first Mexican American to sit on the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, waited longer for a vote than any judicial nominee in U.S. history. As a result, he had become the prime exhibit for Democratic accusations that the Senate GOP majority was subjecting minority and female judicial appointees to unfair scrutiny. The criticism was heightened last fall after the Senate, on a party-line vote, rejected Ronnie White, the first African American on the Missouri Supreme Court, for a federal judgeship.

Additionally, Democrats have vowed to use Republican opposition to Paez against GOP presidential front-runner George W. Bush, who is aggressively courting the Latino vote. A Bush campaign spokeswoman said that the Texas governor does not comment on Senate judicial confirmations, but she said that 13% of Bush’s nearly 2,600 appointments in his state have been Latinos.

Lott denied any Republican bias, noting that 18 of the 34 judges confirmed by the Senate last year were minorities and women. Earlier this week, the Senate confirmed another Latino judge, Julio Fuentes of New Jersey, to the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, by a 93-to-0 vote. Fuentes was nominated a year ago.

Foes See Further Shift to the Left

Opponents of Paez and Berzon have criticized them as judicial activists who would shift a “rogue” circuit court further to the left.

“The [9th] Circuit is out of control, and these nominees will make it worse,” Lott said.

At the White House, Clinton thanked the Senate but urged lawmakers to fill 74 remaining vacancies on the bench--about 9% of federal judgeships--that have caused backlogs of cases. “Election-year politics should not be used as an excuse to slow down the confirmation process,” he said.

Reached in Los Angeles after the vote, Paez, 52, said he was “pleased and honored by the Senate’s decision to confirm my nomination. I’m very grateful.”

“I’d like to thank President Clinton and all of his administration, including the vice president, for their unwavering and unlimited support of my nomination,” said Paez, who was presiding over a trial during the vote. “I also would like to thank all of the senators who spoke on my behalf, supported my nomination and who voted for confirmation today.”

Antonia Hernandez, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said: “We’re very, very happy.” She added that she hopes the Senate vote will open the way for appointment of more Latinos to the federal bench.

Latinos hold 42 of about 879 positions in the federal judiciary--or about 4.8% of the total, even though Latinos make up 11% of the nation’s population and are projected to become the nation’s largest minority group in 2005, according to MALDEF.

The National Women’s Law Center in Washington issued a statement lauding the confirmations and praising Berzon’s “expertise in employment discrimination and other areas of the law that are central to equal opportunity for women.”

Reached at her law office in San Francisco, Berzon, 54, said that she looks “forward to sitting on the 9th Circuit and pledge my very best efforts to approach every case in a fair, thoughtful and open-minded manner.”

Thursday’s vote came after a flurry of last-minute lobbying, including calls to senators not only from Clinton but also from Paez’s mother.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) forced a vote on Paez, who was nominated in January 1996, and Berzon, nominated in January 1998, by blocking a vote on the appointment of the mayor of Tupelo, Miss., to the Tennessee Valley Authority board.

Boxer, displaying on the Senate floor a poster-sized photo of the nominees, cited Paez’s support from law enforcement groups and Republicans, such as Rep. James E. Rogan (R-Glendale), a former judge.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) said that he supported Paez after the judge, a Utah native, pledged to “abide by the rule of law and not engage in judicial activism.”

Other Republicans Voting for Paez

Hatch was joined in supporting Paez by Republicans Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, Susan Collins and Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, Slade Gorton of Washington, Connie Mack of Florida, William V. Roth Jr. of Delaware, Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico, Gordon Smith of Oregon, James M. Jeffords of Vermont, Robert F. Bennett of Utah, Ted Stevens of Alaska and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island.

Hatch, however, joined Sen. Frank H. Murkowski (R-Alaska), in introducing legislation to split the court into two circuits, one that would include California, Nevada and Arizona, and a new 12th Circuit encompassing Hawaii, Alaska and the Northwest. They contended that the 9th Circuit--the nation’s biggest--is too large to function well.

Critics of Paez cited some of his rulings and his critical public remarks about California Proposition 187, which sought to deny public benefits to illegal immigrants, and Proposition 209, which barred certain affirmative action preferences.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) contended that Paez’s sentencing of former Democratic fund-raiser John Huang to one year of probation, 500 hours of community service and a $10,000 fine was too lenient.

Boxer responded that Paez was merely following the prosecutor’s recommendation. But Sessions shot back that Paez was not bound to accept the plea bargain.

Thomas L. Jipping, director of the conservative Free Congress Foundation, said that Republicans who voted for the nominations helped to “further politicize the judiciary by moving the nation’s most activist court further in the wrong direction.”

Berzon and Paez attended UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall Law School and both told senators during hearings that David H. Souter, a moderate appointed by President Bush, is the current Supreme Court justice they admire most.

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Times staff writer Henry Weinstein in Los Angeles contributed to this story.