Senate confirms judge to San Diego federal court

The U.S. Senate voted 49-47 on Friday afternoon to confirm U.S. Magistrate Judge Benjamin J. Cheeks to a vacancy on the Southern District of California.

He will replace Senior U.S. District Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel, who took senior status in September 2023. Cheeks was nominated in October and was one of President Joe Biden's final judicial nominees before he leaves office next month.

A Black former prosecutor who spent more than a decade as a criminal defense attorney starting in 2013, he was appointed a magistrate judge by Southern District judges in July, Cheeks is a 2003 graduate of American University, Washington College of Law.

The Senate voted earlier Friday to cut off debate on his nomination by an identical vote. No Republican senators supported him in that vote. U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff, D-CA did not vote, although he voted to approve Cheeks' nomination during a Senate Judiciary Committee vote on Dec. 12.

Three other senators - U.S. Sen. And Vice President-elect J.D. Vance, R-OH, U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, I-WV, and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio and Secretary of State-designate Marco Rubio, R-FL - did not vote on the cloture motion.

The Senate is scheduled to hold a floor vote on Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Serena R. Murillo, nominated for a seat on the Central District of California bench, later Friday.

During his nomination hearing last month, Cheeks was questioned by U.S. Sen. John N. Kennedy, R-LA, about articles he wrote on race relations, demonstrations following the death of George Floyd and illegal immigration.

"Needless to say, I have guarded opinions about the police," he wrote in a 2019 article about raising his young sons, who are Black and Hispanic. "How do I teach my sons to respect them and fear them at the same time? ... Do some of them view Black males as more dangerous than others? I think so."

Cheeks, while a criminal defense lawyer, wrote that immigrants arrested when crossing the U.S.-Mexico border without permission should be released even though "technically, the law was broken. But these particular defendants - poor, hungry, hardworking and not dangerous - deserve a pass from prosecution."

Under questioning by Kennedy, Cheeks distanced himself from those comments, saying they were written in his capacity as an advocate and not as the judge he has since become. "I do not mean it now," he told the Senate Judiciary Committee last month.

Kennedy said he did not believe him. "You've taken a lot of radical positions, judge," the senator said.

Democrats have until Jan. 3 to confirm Biden's outstanding judicial nominations, when Republicans will take control of the Senate following their victories in the Nov. 5 elections, ending a four-year run during which Democrats controlled the chamber by a narrow margin that allowed them to confirm Biden's nominees.

They have rushed to confirm most of Biden's remaining California district court nominees during the lame duck session despite opposition from President-elect Donald Trump and Senate Republicans.

Several of Biden's nominees have been confirmed by the Senate in this month, while Senate Democrats dropped his nomination of San Diego County Superior Court Judge Rebecca S. Kanter for a vacancy on the Southern District of California.

U.S. District Judge Anne Hwang, a former Los Angeles County Superior Court judge and federal public defender, was confirmed to the Central District on Dec. 2 by a 48-43 vote and was assigned to the court's Western Division in Los Angeles. She is a 2002 graduate of USC Gould School of Law.

U.S. District Judge Cynthia Valenzuela Dixon, a former State Bar Court judge who is a former national head of litigation of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, was confirmed last week and assigned to the Western Division in Los Angeles. She graduated in 1995 from UCLA School of Law.

A day later, the Senate voted 50-47 to confirm U.S. District Judge Noel Wise, an Alameda County Superior Court judge since 2014, to a seat on the Northern District of California. Wise previously worked for the U.S. Department of Justice attorney in its environmental and natural resources division, as in-house counsel for Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and at her own firm.

Wise was assigned to chambers in San Jose.