Judge Mustafa T. Kasubhai, in an undated image from Wikipedia.
Jonathan House / Wikipedia
The U.S. Senate confirmed the stalled nomination of a federal judge in Oregon Tuesday. Democrats are racing to confirm judicial appointments as the final weeks of the 118th Congress come to a close.
Mustafa Taher Kasubhai was confirmed 51 to 44, along party lines, to a lifetime appointment as a U.S. District Court Judge in Oregon. Since 2018, Kasubhai has served as a U.S. Magistrate Judge in Eugene, becoming the first Muslim American to serve on the federal bench. Before that, he was a civil attorney in Klamath Falls and Eugene and served for roughly a decade as a Lane County Circuit Court judge.
President Joe Biden nominated Kasubhai in September 2023. The following month, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee grilled Kasubhai during a confirmation hearing that focused less on his jurisprudence and more on gender, race and other culture war flashpoints.
“What I try to do when I sit on the bench is I extend to people graciousness and patience so that they have not just the opportunity to be heard,” Kasubhai said during his Oct. 4, 2023 confirmation hearing before the committee in Washington D.C. “When I issue a ruling whether somebody prevails or doesn’t prevail, I want that ruling to be conveyed in a way that helps them to think of the court as a place in which decisions can be decided impartially without regard to who they are and that they were heard.”
A confirmation vote was scheduled to take place back in June, but was delayed due to attendance issues in the Senate, as Bloomberg Law reported.
Democrats are moving quickly to appoint federal judges nominated by Biden before they lose control of the Senate, following Republicans’ sweeping victories this month in both U.S. Congress and the White House chambers.
While federal judges are independent, they’ve not escaped politics as groups such as the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group, have sought to vet attorneys, judges and legal scholars for seats on the federal bench.
In a joint statement, Oregon’s U.S. Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, both Democrats, said Kasubhai “brings to the U.S. District Court an all-star résumé of legal accomplishment, judicial temperament and personal integrity.”