U.S. Senate confirms Puerto Rican judge Gelpi to 1st Circ. seat

(Reuters) - The U.S. Senate on Monday voted to confirm Gustavo Gelpi to serve on the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, clearing the way for him to become the second Puerto Rican to ever sit on the Boston-based appellate court that hears cases from the territory.

The Democratic-controlled Senate voted 51-42 to elevate the Puerto Rican federal district court judge to a seat on the 1st Circuit, despite Republican objections to his criticism of the U.S. Supreme Court's "Insular Cases" from the 1900s.

Those rulings were instrumental in defining the legal status of Puerto Ricans and endorsed the notion that the people of newly acquired U.S. territories could receive different treatment than citizens living in U.S. states.

Gelpi, 55, has said those rulings had "racist underpinnings" and has written critically of them. One ruling said the territories were inhabited "by alien races, differing from us in religion, customs, laws, methods of taxation and modes of thought."

During a Senate Judiciary Committee in July, Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the panel's ranking Republican, criticized Gelpi for taking "the remarkable step of calling the Supreme Court cases wrongly decided and calling for their overturning."

In written responses submitted to the committee, Gelpi said notwithstanding his criticism, the Insular Cases remain binding precedent that he, as all judges, are bound to adhere to whenever applicable.

The conservative-dominated U.S. Supreme Court on Nov. 9 is expected to hear arguments in a case that could give the justices an opportunity to roll back or even overturn the Insular Cases.

That case concerns whether Congress unconstitutionally denied the Supplemental Security Income benefit to Puerto Rico's residents.

President Joe Biden has made 53 judicialnominations to date. Democrats have been rushing to confirm them while they maintain their narrow control of the Senate to shape the judiciary and bring greater diversity to the bench.

Gelpi is the sixth of Biden's 13 appellate nominees to win Senate confirmation so far. Biden has been seeking to use his nominations to bring greater personal and professional diversity to the bench.

With Monday's vote, Biden will have secured the confirmation of five judges with experience as public defenders, further diversifying the federal bench based on professional background. Judges are often former prosecutors and corporate lawyers.

Gelpi, a graduate of Suffolk University Law School, served as a federal public defender in Puerto Rico from 1993 to 1997. He went on to work in the Puerto Rico Department of Justice and serve as the territory's solicitor general.

He then worked at the law firm McConnell Valdes until he was appointed in 2001 to work as a federal magistrate judge. The Senate confirmed him to serve as a district court judge in 2006.

Read more:

Senate Judiciary committee advances 1st Circuit nominee Gustavo Gelpi

In the shadow of U.S. Supreme Court history, a Puerto Rican family struggles

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