3 judges nominated to federal court in Los Angeles

President Joe Biden nominated three sitting judges to vacancies on the Central District of California, as the timeline for getting judges confirmed grows increasingly short in an election year.

The choices are Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michelle Williams Court, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Anne Hwang and State Bar Court Judge Cynthia Valenzuela Dixon.

The picks meet the president's usual pattern of choosing women while emphasizing diversity both in racial background and professional experience.

Court, supervising judge of the court's civil division since a year ago, has been a superior court judge since appointed by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2012. Before that, she worked as an attorney, vice president and general counsel at Bet Tzedek Legal Services from 2002 to 2011.

A 1993 graduate of Loyola Law School, Court was an associate at Milberg, Weiss, Bershad, Hynes & Lerach from 2000 to 2002 and previously worked at two other firms. She also was a project attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California from 1994 to 1995. She is married to Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, a nonprofit public interest organization.

Judge Anne Hwang

Hwang, who has served on the superior court bench since 2019, spent a dozen years before that as a federal public defender in Los Angeles. She also worked as an associate at Irell & Manella LLP and graduated from the University of Southern California Law School in 2002.

Valenzuela Dixon, who has been a State Bar Court judge since she was appointed to the position by the state Supreme Court in 2016, has been a supervising attorney for the Central District of California, head of national litigation at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and an assistant U.S. attorney in the Central District. Early in her career, the 1995 UCLA School of Law graduate was a trial attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice's civil rights division in Washington, D.C., and a special assistant at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in Los Angeles.

Cynthia Valenzuela Dixon

Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel of MALDEF, could not be reached Wednesday about Valenzuela Dixon's nomination. In the past, he has complained that Biden and California's senators have not done enough about what he said was the underrepresentation of Latinos on the Central District bench.

There are four current or future vacancies in the Central District, which is based in Los Angeles. Senior U.S. District Judge George H. Wu, an appointee of President George W. Bush, took senior status in November.

U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney, another Bush appointee, announced earlier this month that he would be retiring May 31. U.S. District Judge Dale S. Fischer will take senior status May 1. U.S. District Judge Philip S. Gutierrez is scheduled to take senior status in October. Both, like Wu and Carney, are Bush appointees.