Hearing for Three Nominees

The Senate Judiciary Committee today held a hearing on the nomination of Judge Jacqueline Nguyen to the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Nguyen was nominated to the Ninth Circuit by President Obama on September 22, 2011; she was appointed to her current seat on the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California by President Obama in July 2009, taking her place on the bench in December of that year when the Senate confirmed her with a unanimous vote of 97-0. Judge Nguyen, who was born in Dalat, Vietnam in 1965 and fled that country at the age of nine during the fall of Saigon, is the first Vietnamese American to serve on the federal bench. If confirmed to the Ninth Circuit, she will be the United States’ first Asian Pacific American woman to serve as a federal appellate court judge and one of only two Asian Pacific Americans actively serving in the nation’s federal Courts of Appeals.

Hearings were also held for Gregg Jeffrey Costa and David Campos Guaderrama, to be United States District Judges for the Southern District and the Western District of Texas, respectively.

All three seats are open due to vacancies that have been designated judicial emergencies by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. The seat to which Nguyen is nominated has been vacant for 1,016 days since its creation on January 21, 2009. Costa and Guaderrama are being considered for seats vacant for hundreds of days--Costa’s for 510 days, Guaderrama’s for 980—since the prior occupants took senior status.

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