Sen. Todd Young wants to add federal judges in Indiana, but 2020 election is a hang-up

Chris Sikich | Indianapolis Star

Show Caption Hide Caption Sen. Todd Young sees good things for Republicans in midterms IndyStar Reporter Tim Evans interviews Sen. Todd Young at GOP Watch Party on Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2018.

The facts seem indisputable: Indiana's southern federal court is among the most overworked in the nation.

Most criminal cases filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana drag on for at least a year. Civil cases average twice that time. The court's five judges have the second highest caseload in the country, when weighted by complexity.

The solution seems pragmatic. A bipartisan judicial group recommends Congress add two federal judges to spread out the work. Sen. Todd Young, R-Indiana, is ready to file the legislation, which would add judges in Indiana and similarly overbooked courts in Arizona, California, Florida, New Jersey and Texas.

But, of course, there is more to it than that. President Donald Trump would appoint those new judges, but the presidential election is a year out. It's anyone's guess who will be in the Oval Office to appoint those judges should Congress wait until at least 2021. Maybe Trump. Maybe a Democrat.

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Republicans' refusal to allow President Barack Obama to fill an open Supreme Court seat early in his final year of office added more partisanship to an already fraught process. The two parties would need to come together to authorize legislation to create more judgeships, and that didn't often happen even in less partisan times. Congress last created such judgeships in 2003.

There is cause to believe a bipartisan solution could happen. And there is cause to believe that's naive.

Young says he approached Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, on the Senate floor to offer a compromise: Allow Trump to appoint some of the new judges in 2020 and let whomever is president in 2021 appoint the remainder. He followed up with a formal letter to Feinstein, who is the ranking Democrat on the Judicial Committee.

Young said he hasn't heard back.

Reached by IndyStar, Feinstein's office said she is looking into the issue but had no further information to share.

"It just struck me as sort of a reasonable and obvious compromise," Young said, "especially in light of the fact that her state as much as any other requires more judges."

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Young said he is open to discussing other solutions. He is unconvinced matters are going to be any less partisan following the 2020 election, so he wants to tackle the problem now.

"Unless Democrats control all of the levers of power in Washington in 2021," he said, "I cannot conceive of a situation that will be a more hospitable atmosphere (for Democrats) toward adding federal judges and reducing caseload."

He quoted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., both in the letter to Feinstein and to IndyStar, that justice too long delayed is justice denied.

"If you are waiting a year to have your case heard," he said, " if your life and circumstances and liberty are left in limbo, then you are being denied justice by our federal system, and that is simply inexcusable and cannot continue."

The problem is real, said the Southern District's chief judge, Jane Magnus-Stinson.

Congress last created a new judgeship here in 1978, but filings keep increasing.

She said the district has nearly three times the number of civil case new filings per judge this year — an eye-opening 1,266 — than the national average.

During the Trump administration, the U.S. attorney’s office has been filing more criminal cases than in the past, most notably charging defendants for gun offenses in federal rather than state court. In Obama's last year in office, she said the district had 435 defendants. Through this November, there are 530.

"There has been a need for decades," she told IndyStar, "but it's becoming pretty critical at this point."

And the politics? Trump already has filled two vacancies here.

"I'm not getting into that," said Magnus-Stinson, who was appointed by Obama. "The president has appointed two qualified individuals for our court. All I can do is articulate the need."

Call IndyStar reporter Chris Sikich at 317-444-6036. Follow him on Twitter: @ChrisSikich.