WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Senate has voted to approve the nomination of Attorney Mary Kay Lanthier of Orwell to serve as the next federal district court judge for Vermont.
The rollcall vote was 55-42 and ended shortly after 6 p.m. Wednesday.
Lanthier, 53, has been the supervisory attorney for the Rutland County Public Defender’s Office since 2007.
Lanthier has refused to take phone calls from the media since her name first surfaced as a candidate this summer and she did not respond to a phone message on Wednesday.
President Joe Biden nominated Lanthier this summer to replace Judge Geoffrey W. Crawford of Burlington, who stepped down on Aug. 10 after serving for 10 years in the fulltime post.
Crawford moved to Senior Status, which will allow him a reduced case load. Crawford is a former state trial court judge and associate justice of the Vermont Supreme Court.
The vote on Wednesday pretty much followed party lines as Democrats supported Biden’s nomination with some crossovers. Republicans have been critical of some presidential nominations for federal judges and U.S. Attorneys, citing what they call the “politicalization” of Biden’s Justice Department. Nominations to fill four vacant posts as U.S. Attorneys, including for Massachusetts, were sidetracked on Wednesday before the vote to consider Lanthier.
Biden nominated Lanthier this summer after three other earlier recommendations by a special Vermont screening committee of Democrats and Progressives established under the direction of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. failed to get traction.
Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., who was named to the Senate Judiciary Committee last year, helped lead the Lanthier nomination through the sometimes complex and contentious political process. Welch, who is in his first term, replaced Vermont’s former senior senator, Patrick J. Leahy, a longtime powerful member of the Judiciary panel.
Lanthier faced a June hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, but found the going soft as the senators focused that day on other three other judicial nominees.
The Senate Judiciary Committee later voted 13-7 to support Lanthier’s nomination on Aug. 1 – the final day before Congress took its final summer recess.
With the full Senate back in session on Wednesday, Welch offered words of support for Lanthier shortly before voting on the nomination began. He called the Rutland area native “an extraordinary person” with a lifetime commitment to public service.
Welch said her father was a slate roofer in Fair Haven and her mother was a longtime local postmaster. He said she has modesty and humility. Welch, a lawyer, said he believes Lanthier will be an excellent judge.
Sanders later offered comments about Lanthier’s resume and her fitness to serve.
Lanthier will preside at the federal courthouse at 151 West Street not far from the Judge Frank McCaffrey State Courthouse where she did much of her state work.
Three other lawyers had been proposed for the federal judgeship in January by the Vermont screening committee, but were put on the back burner this spring without explanation before the FBI and Department of Justice suddenly started vetting Lanthier.
Assistant Federal Defender Steven L. Barth, Vermont Law School Professor Jessica C. Brown and First Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael P. Drescher were deemed initially qualified by the Vermont screening committee.
Biden, however, had made clear he was looking for women, people of color, other minorities and public defenders to serve as judges.
That appeared to put Brown, who was a public defender for 24 years in New Hampshire and Vermont, out in front over the two white men. But the Department of Justice and the FBI completed a background check on Lanthier in June, and President Biden subsequently announced he would nominate Lanthier for the lifetime appointment as one of the two trial court judges for Vermont. Biden gave no explanation for bypassing the first three. Brown has since accepted the post of Burlington City Attorney.
Lanthier will be the second woman to serve as a District Court Judge in Vermont. Christina Reiss, who is the chief federal judge, was the first and is based at the federal courthouse in Burlington.
About half the work on the federal docket involves criminal cases. The other half is civil – a mixture that includes a wide range of cases ranging from civil rights to employment discrimination to contract disputes and more.
Lanthier said in her application that all her legal work had been in state courts and none in federal court.
The annual pay for federal district court judges was bumped this year from $232,600 to $243,300.
Lanthier had a half dozen letters of support from state prosecutors, the Defender General, a former longtime Rutland County police chief, a retired state judge and the president of the Vermont Bar Association.
Lanthier received her undergraduate degree from Amherst College in 1993 and her law degree from Northeastern University School of Law in 1996. She taught either one or two evidence labs each spring semester between 2017 and 2023 at Vermont Law and Graduate School.
She served as the treasurer for the Vermont Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
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Publish date : 2024-09-11 13:03:00
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