President Joe Biden will nominate South Carolina U.S. District Court Judge Michelle Childs to fill the pending vacancy on the prestigious and influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the White House said Thursday.
The University of South Carolina School of Law graduate, if confirmed by the U.S. Senate, would succeed Judge David Tatel, who announced his intention to step down from the court in February.
With Childs, the White House also announced Biden’s intention to nominate Nancy Gbana Abudu to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, putting her on track to be the first person of color to serve on the 11th Circuit from Georgia.
The president called both jurists “extraordinarily qualified, experienced, and devoted to the rule of law and our Constitution.”
Childs’ elevation to the court would put her at the forefront for consideration if a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court opens up. Supreme Court justices are often plucked from the D.C. Circuit. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, appointed by former President Donald Trump, and Merrick Garland, nominated by former President Barack Obama, both served on the D.C. Circuit. Garland’s nomination was ultimately scuttled, but he is now the U.S. attorney general.
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg also served on the D.C. Circuit Court.
Some Democrats have put pressure on Justice Stephen Breyer, who turned 83 this year, to retire, though the nearly 30-year justice has not announced plans along those lines.
Childs’ nomination also marks a major milestone and meets a promise for diversity.
Biden has pledged to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court and has elevated other Black female jurists. “I can’t think of a better person to really appoint to this position than Judge Michelle Childs,” said Danielle Holley-Walker, a law professor and the dean of Howard University School of Law, who worked previously as associate dean for academic affairs and as a law professor at South Carolina.
Childs, 55, is considered a contender for the U.S. Supreme Court. Her name has been part of a larger conversation about elevating a Black woman to the Supreme Court, pushed loudly in large part by U.S. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, D-S.C.
Clyburn, who endorsed Biden ahead of South Carolina’s Democratic presidential primary in 2020, is credited with helping the president secure his party’s nomination and, before that, the state’s primary after multiple losses in early-voting states.
He’s been actively advocating for Biden to put Childs on the Supreme Court, and Childs’ nomination to the D.C. Circuit comes less than a week after Biden made his first trip back to the state as president.
Biden returned to South Carolina on last Friday to speak at Clyburn’s alma mater, South Carolina State University.
“Judge Childs has served with distinction on the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina. She has distinguished herself with keen intellect, fundamental fairness, and exemplary temperament; and is a leader among her peers, currently serving as President of the Federal Judges Association,” Clyburn said Thursday after the White House made its official announcement.
“Judge J. Michelle Childs will bring honor to this prestigious court and I am hopeful, once officially nominated, the Senate will swiftly confirm her.”
Former South Carolina state lawmaker, Democratic strategist and lawyer Bakari Sellers in a tweet called Childs a “brilliant jurist.”
And former Columbia Mayor Bob Coble, who worked with Childs at Nexsen Pruet law firm, tweeted there’s “no better choice.”
A U.S. District Court judge for more than a decade, Childs’ resume includes work as a South Carolina state trial court judge on the circuit court from 2006 to 2010 and as a commissioner from 2002 to 2006 on South Carolina’s Workers’ Compensation Commission, a panel that hears injured workers’ claims.
For two years before, Childs, who was in her early 30s, was the deputy director of the state Department of Labor, and before that worked as an associate and then partner at Nexsen Pruet, a prominent Columbia law office.
She was the first Black woman to make partner at that firm. “She’s a perfectly charming person, very down to earth and, at a young age, had an incredible resume,” former South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges, who named Childs to both state agencies and is now a lawyer and lobbyist in Columbia, told The State in February.
“She was clearly someone who was going places.” Childs holds a degree from Duke University School of Law, an undergraduate degree from the University of Florida and two degrees from the University of South Carolina School of Law and School of Business, both in 1991.
Holley-Walker described Childs as an “incredible friend” of the University of South Carolina. She said Childs worked closely on a middle-school mentoring program at the law school and, most recently, led the American Bar Association’s Judicial Division, sponsoring a handful of programs.
She described Childs as someone who thinks deeply about the future of the law, where it’s going and “has a deep sense of fairness and equity.” Holley-Walker said she regularly consults Childs for advice and, when she’s back in Columbia, visits one of her “favorite people” to spend time with.
“One thing we need in the judiciary more, are people who relate to everyday people,” Holley-Walker said, noting Childs’ degree from the University of South Carolina School of Law, prestigious in its own right but not Ivy League, where many jurists graduate.
“Beyond her incredible skills as a jurist and lawyer, she’s just a very kind person, ... universally looked up to.”
In a profile article about Childs in The State in February, former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Jean Toal called Childs her “go-to judge” for the most gnarly of cases.
“She’s the full package,” Toal told The State then. “I can tell you that.” Among some of her most prominent cases, in 2014 Childs ruled a South Carolina law unconstitutional when she upheld a Lexington County same-sex couple’s bid to get legal recognition from the state for their out-of-state marriage.
She also presided over many of the civil cases exposed after the massive failure of the V.C. Summer nuclear project in Fairfield County.
And, last year, she oversaw cases that pitted concerns about voting fraud against concerns about health amid the COVID-19 pandemic — a ruling to remove witness signature requirements that ultimately was overturned by the Supreme Court.
But she’s no pushover, former colleagues and other lawyers who went before her noted in the same profile. “With some judges, you have to kiss their ring,” veteran Columbia lawyer Jack Duncan, who has appeared before Childs, told The State in February. “Not her.”
With Childs likely headed to the D.C. Circuit, Biden has another judicial vacancy to fill. In October, Judge Henry Floyd signaled to Biden his intention to step down from the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals and go on senior status from full-time work.
Childs, a Detroit native and lives in Columbia, had also been said to be under consideration for that slot. The 4th Circuit, which has five South Carolina judges including Floyd, covers South Carolina as well as North Carolina, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia.
It’s often regarded as another stepping stone to the Supreme Court.
(McClatchy Washington reporter Francesca Chambers contributed to this report.)
