Marty Schladen

El Paso Times

AUSTIN — By not pressing for hearings to confirm nominees to the federal bench in Texas, Republican U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz are exacerbating a backlog in the courts and obstructing Texans’ access to justice, two left-leaning groups said Thursday.

Progress Texas and the Center for American Progress on Friday released an updated version of “Texas, where are the judges?” — a report that was originally released in 2014. It said that with 11 vacancies in federal courts throughout the state, Texas has the most in the nation.

Two are on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. One is in the Western District, which includes El Paso. Formerly occupied by Judge Robert A. Junell, it has been vacant for 463 days.

Federal judges are appointed for life. While the president nominates them, they must be confirmed first by the Senate Judiciary Committee, on which both Cornyn and Cruz sit. After that, nominees must be confirmed by the full Senate before they are appointed.“As federal benches sit empty in the Lone Star State, the courts remain overworked,” the report said. “This means that countless Texans and Texas businesses have not had their cases heard in a timely manner. Not having judges on the bench has substantial, real-world consequences for tens of thousands of Texans.”

Republicans have been accused of slow-walking appointments to the federal bench in the hope that a Republican is elected president in November. That would allow judges to be nominated who are more conservative than those who would get the nod from President Barack Obama.

Cornyn, Cruz and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., have said they won’t hold hearings on Merrick Garland, Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court, because they want to wait for the next president to be elected and take office.

To smooth the process of appointing judges to the lower courts, the White House negotiates with senators from the states in which the vacancies exist before submitting nominees to the Judiciary Committee.

Cruz and Cornyn have agreed with the White House on five nominees to the Texas bench, but after almost two months, the Texas senators still haven’t submitted “blue slips” bearing the nominees’ names to the Judiciary Committee. The nominees include Judge David Walter Counts III, who was picked for the Western District. He currently is a magistrate judge in the same district.

“When we talk about Sen. Cornyn and Sen. Cruz obstructing justice and not doing their jobs, this is what we’re talking about,” Phillip Martin, deputy director of Progress Texas, said in a conference call with reporters Thursday.

Cornyn spokeswoman Libby Hambleton said the senator hadn’t submitted the slips because he hadn’t received then yet from the Judiciary Committee.

Martin said that would be an easily solved matter for Cornyn, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate.

“As a long-time and senior member of the Judiciary Committee, I'm sure the Senator could talk to his Republican chairman and ask for one,” Martin said in an email. “It's been 50 days so there's no excuse for not acting faster.”

Cruz’s spokesman didn’t respond to questions about delays in submitting the names of Texas nominees.

Marty Schladen can be reached at 512-479-6606; mschladen@elpasotimes.com; @martyschladen on Twitter.