Los Angeles County judge confirmed to federal bench

The U.S. Senate voted 49-47 on Friday evening to confirm Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Serena R. Murillo to a vacancy on the Central District of California bench.

Murillo will replace U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney, an appointee of President George W. Bush who took inactive status in May.

Murillo was nominated in October and was President Joe Biden's last judicial nominee along with U.S. District Judge Benjamin J. Cheeks of San Diego, who has served as a magistrate judge since July after a career as a prosecutor and criminal defense attorney. He was confirmed 49-47 earlier on Friday.

The Senate voted earlier Friday to cut off debate on Murillo's nomination by a 49-47 margin. No Republican senators supported her in that vote. U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff, D-CA, did not vote.

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

A 1996 graduate of Loyola Law School, Murillo spent 17 years as prosecutor with the Los Angeles County district attorney's office until she was elected a superior court judge in 2014 and was sworn in the following January.

Her father, a farm worker, was a Mexican immigrant. Murillo's mother is of Irish descent. She grew up in Chino.

The Senate Judiciary Commitee approved Murillo's nomination on a partisan vote earlier this month, with all Democrats - including Schiff, who had been sworn in a few days earlier - voting for her while all Republican senators were opposed.

During her nomination hearing, U.S. Sen. John N. Kennedy, R-LA, questioned Murillo about comments she made on a podcast a couple of years ago that he said proved that she favored hiring quotas.

"I have never advocated on behalf of quotas," Murillo responded. She added that diversity on the bench "builds confidence in those institutions."

Before starting as a prosecutor in 1997, she worked as an associate attorney at McNicholas & McNicholas LLP in Los Angeles and as a law clerk at Shernoff, Bidart, and Echeverria LLP in Claremont.

Murillo is the fifth and final Biden nominee to be confirmed as a California district court judge during the lame duck session since President-elect Donald Trump was elected and Republicans won control of the Senate starting Jan. 3.

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, and Cynthia Valenzuela Dixon, a former State Bar Court judge, were confirmed to vacancies on the Central District of California bench earlier this month. Both will preside over matters in Los Angeles in the court's Western Division.

U.S. District Judge Noel Wise, who served as an Alameda County Superior Court judge since 2014, was confirmed by the Senate Dec. 11 to a seat on the Northern District of California. The 1993 graduate of Nova Southeastern University Law School was assigned to chambers in San Jose.