Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) has apparently found fault with President Joe Biden’s choice to appoint a diverse range of judges to the overwhelmingly white and male federal bench.
On the House floor on Thursday, Grothman said Biden had appointed just five “white guys” out of 97 judicial appointments in his first two years in office, citing an unnamed study.
“I was expecting maybe 25 or 30 were white guys because I know President Biden wasn’t heavy on appointing more white guys,” he said, adding that two of those “white guys” also happened to be gay.
“So [it’s] almost impossible for white guys [that are] not gay apparently to get appointed here,” he continued.
Aaron Rupar on X (formerly Twitter): “Wisconsin’s finest Glenn Grothman is on the House floor right now complaining that Biden isn’t nominating enough straight “white guys” as judges pic.twitter.com/mdTmqiToxQ / X”
Wisconsin’s finest Glenn Grothman is on the House floor right now complaining that Biden isn’t nominating enough straight “white guys” as judges pic.twitter.com/mdTmqiToxQ
According to a January report by The 19th, the federal judiciary consists of about 800 active judges — 46% were white men, 23% were white women, 16% were men of color and 14% were women of color.
Moreover, an April report from Lambda Legal found that just 2.2% of judges on the federal bench are openly LGBTQ, which is just a 0.6% increase from last year. The report adds that there aren’t any openly bisexual, transgender or nonbinary judges on the federal bench.
But that hasn’t stopped Grothman from criticizing Biden’s judicial choices. In March, he called the appointments “a little bit scary” and raised the possibility that the president was “actively discriminating against white heterosexual men.”
He also failed to mention that Republicans have successfully packed federal courts with conservative, far-right judges for years.
