There Are Only 2 Native American Fedheral Judges. Biden Just Nominated A Third.

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Huffington Post

05/12/2021 05:42 pm ET

The president tapped Lauren J. King for a U.S. district court seat. If confirmed, she’d be one of just a handful of Indigenous judges in U.S. history.

By Jennifer Bendery

President Joe Biden unveiled his latest batch of judicial nominees on Wednesday, and in the mix is a woman who would be one of the nation’s few Native American federal judges.

Biden nominated Lauren J. King to a lifetime seat on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. King, a citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation based in Oklahoma, is currently an attorney at the Seattle-based law firm Foster Garvey, P.C. She has served as a pro tem appellate judge for the Northwest Intertribal Court System since 2013 and previously taught Federal Indian Law at the Seattle University School of Law.

If confirmed, King will be one of just three Native American judges currently on the federal bench out of nearly 900 federal judgeships. The other two are U.S. district judges Diane Humetewa and Ada Brown.

Only four Native Americans have ever been federal judges in the 230-year history of the U.S. courts, and that’s out of more than 4,200 people who have served as Article III judges (i.e., lifetime judges on district courts, appeals courts and the Supreme Court). Besides Humetewa and Brown, the other two were U.S. district judges Michael Burrage and Frank Howell Seay. There has never been an Indigenous judge on a U.S. appeals court.

Read more: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/joe-biden-judicial-nominees-native-american_n_609c2632e4b063dccea4e046

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President Biden Nominates Muscogee Citizen Lauren J. King to Federal Bench for the Western District of Washington

BY NATIVE NEWS ONLINE STAFF MAY 12, 2021

WASHINGTON — Lauren J. King, a tribal citizen of the Muscogee Nation, was nominated by President Joe Biden on Wednesday to become a federal district judge for the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington.



Lauren J. King

She must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. If confirmed, King would be the third active Native American federal district court judge in the country, the fifth in the history of the federal judiciary, and the first Native American federal judge in the Western District of Washington.

King currently is a principal at Foster Garvey, P.C. based in Seattle, Wash., where she has practiced since 2012. She chairs the firm’s Native American Law Practice Group and has served as a pro tem appellate judge for the Northwest Intertribal Court System since 2013.

King is also an appointed Commissioner on the Washington State Gambling Commission. She previously taught Federal Indian Law at the Seattle University School of Law. Prior to joining Foster Garvey, King was an associate at Byrnes Keller Cromwell LLP from 2010 to 2012 and at K&L Gates from 2008 to 2009. Ms. King graduated from the University of Virginia School of Law in 2008, and from the University of Washington, with distinction, in 2004. Ms. King is a citizen of the Muscogee Nation, which is located in Oklahoma.

More:
https://nativenewsonline.net/currents/president-biden-nominates-muscogee-citizen-lauren-j-king-to-federal-bench-for-the-western-district-of-washington

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

1. Good.

I'm going to guess that very few Native Americans ever make it through law school, let a lone to being a judge. Nonetheless, there should be many, many more of them.

I wish I were a better writer, because I'd love to read the novel or series of alternate history that postulates the original people here had a technological civilization very close to what the Europeans had when they first got here. Imagine. Oh, and imagine they'd developed the kind of herd diseases that Europeans had, that so devastated the original people. What if, instead, they'd passed similarly terrible diseases the Europeans had no natural immunity to.

For one thing, there might well have been a similar devastation of population. Hmmm. So what if the population of Europe was as impacted as the population of the Americas.

Boy, I wish I were a better writer.

[Bayard]

2. They did give Europeans tobacco

And that has been pretty devastating. But not nearly what was done to the native Nations.

[Warpy]

3. That's something I had to explain to my right wing bigot dad

Indians aren't just drunk stereotypes these days, they're going to e-school, law school, medical school. His flabber was gasted by that. My mother was a little ahead of the game, she was blind and everybody looked alike and she picked up on things like educational level very quickly.

(He was a right wing bigot, but he was a gent. I never saw him be rude or patronizing to any POC)