Biden gains 6th Circuit vacancy to fill as Gibbons takes senior status

Aug 18 (Reuters) - U.S. Circuit Judge Julia Smith Gibbons plans to step down from active service on the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, opening a fourth seat for President Joe Biden to fill on the Cincinnati-based federal appeals court.

Gibbons, an appointee of former Republican President George W. Bush, on Friday confirmed reports that she plans to assume senior status upon the confirmation of her successor after serving 40 years as a member of the federal judiciary, including 21 years on the regional appeals court.

Senior status is a form of semi-retirement for judges over the age of 65 who have completed at least 15 years on the federal bench. Presidents may name new full-time judges to fill those judges' seats.

Biden, a Democrat, has already named three other judges to the court, U.S. Circuit Judges Stephanie Davis, Andre Mathis and Rachel Bloomekatz. They are among the six active Democratic appointees, who serve with 10 Republican appointees.

Biden has secured Senate confirmation for 36 judges to the nation's circuit courts overall.

Gibbons, a 72-year-old native of Tennessee, has served more than half of her life as a judge, beginning in 1981, when then-Governor Lamar Alexander tapped her to become the first woman to ever serve as a trial court judge in the state.

Republican President Ronald Reagan nominated her in 1983 to a seat on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee, and Bush in 2002 elevated her to a position on the 6th Circuit, which hears cases from Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee.

She has served key positions within the federal judiciary, including as chair of the Judicial Conference's Budget Committee from 2005 to 2018 and member of the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation from 2000 to 2003.

As a judge on the 6th Circuit, she was the dissenting vote in a 2-1 ruling in 2011 declaring that a Michigan ban on affirmative action in college admissions that was passed as a ballot initiative in 2006 was unconstitutional.

The U.S. Supreme Court took that case up and in 2014 upheld the ban. Nearly a decade later, the conservative-majority high court this June ruled that universities nationwide could not consider race as a specific factor in college admissions.

In 2021, Gibbons joined an appointee of a Democratic president in a 2-1 ruling reviving the Biden administration's COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal employees and contractors. In a concurring opinion, she stressed the "limited role of the judiciary in this dispute about pandemic policy."

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