Eastern NC Gets US District Court Judge After 14 Year Wait

EASTERN NC – After nearly a decade and a half of vacancy born of partisan political jockeying, eastern North Carolina finally has a judge taking a seat on the bench of the U.S. District Court. Most recently, and repeatedly, Thomas Farr was nominated and blocked from being confirmed by Democrats that smeared the Republican as a racist. Other objectionable picks by Democrats have also been blocked by Republicans.

Then after 14 years of vacancy, Richard Myers, a law professor at UNC, was nominated and confirmed in the U.S. Senate.

From the Fayetteville Observer:

“The chamber voted 68-21 to confirm Richard E. Myers, a former journalist turned attorney and law professor, to the U.S. District Court vacancy in eastern North Carolina. The vote belied the volatile politics of past years as nominees came and went — one several times — across three presidential administrations.

The seat has been vacant since Judge Malcolm Howard moved to semi-retirement status at the end of 2005. The next longest current vacancy in the federal courts began in 2013, according to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. Myers’ path from President Donald Trump’s nomination to confirmation, however, took less than four months.

Born in Jamaica, he grew up in North Carolina and worked at the Wilmington Morning Star in the early 1990s. He earned his law degree from the University of North Carolina’s School of Law in Chapel Hill and has been a professor there. He previously clerked at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and was a federal prosecutor in both California and later North Carolina. […]”

President Donald Trump’s record of getting judges confirmed to the bench is unprecedented; here he continues his streak in breaking a 14 year stalemate. Hopefully Myers follows the appointment with the constitutional textualism the citizens of eastern North Carolina deserve.

Read more on Myers here.