Biden vetoes JUDGES Act over timing and unresolved judgeship-allocation questions

President Joe Biden vetoed S. 4199, the JUDGES Act of 2024, on December 23, 2024. The bill would have created dozens of new federal district judgeships over multiple presidential terms, a proposal the federal judiciary had backed because of rising caseloads. Biden said the House acted too late in the session and that Congress had not fully resolved questions about where new life-tenured judgeships were needed or how senior judges and magistrate judges affected the analysis. The veto mattered because it blocked a rare bipartisan judgeship-expansion bill and preserved the fight over whether the next president should be able to fill the new seats.