Susan Bieke Neilson - Sixth Circuit Nomination and Confirmation

Sixth Circuit Nomination and Confirmation

Neilson was nominated to a Michigan seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit by President George W. Bush on November 8, 2001, to replace Judge Cornelia Groefsema Kennedy, who had taken senior status in 1999. On the same day, Bush also nominated Henry Saad and David W. McKeague to Michigan seats on the Sixth Circuit. On June 26, 2002, Bush nominated Richard Allen Griffin to a fourth Michigan seat on the Sixth Circuit. During the Democrat-controlled 107th Congress, all four nominations were stalled in the Senate Judiciary Committee by then chairman, Senator Patrick Leahy, D-VT.

In the 2002 midterm congressional elections, the Republicans regained control of the Senate. During the new 108th Congress, Senator Orrin Hatch, R-UT, the new Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee began to process the previously blocked four nominees. In March 2003, Michigan's two Democratic senators, Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow announced that they would blue-slip all Bush judicial nominees from Michigan because Bush refused to renominate Helene White and Kathleen McCree Lewis, two Michigan nominees to the Sixth Circuit whose nominations the Senate Republicans had refused to process during President Bill Clinton's second term. Helene White at the time was married to Levin's cousin.

Contrary to Levin's and Stabenow's wishes, Hatch gave Saad, McKeague and Griffin committee hearings, and passed the three nominees out of committee. Furious, Levin and Stabenow convinced their caucus to filibuster the three in order to prevent them from having confirmation votes.

The Senate Republicans increased their numbers in the 109th Congress. Tensions between the Republicans and Democrats rose dramatically as the Republicans sought to break the filibusters of ten Bush court of appeals nominees (including Saad, McKeague and Griffin) by using the nuclear option. In order to defuse the explosive situation concerning the use of the nuclear option and Democrats' obstruction of President Bush's judicial nominations, fourteen moderate Republican and Democratic senators called the Gang of 14 joined together to forge an agreement to guarantee certain filibustered nominations up or down votes. Henry Saad and William Myers, however, were expressly excluded from the guarantee.

After the Gang of 14 agreement in the Senate in 2005, Neilson finally received a floor vote in the Senate on October 27, 2005. (Fellow Michigan Sixth Circuit nominees Richard Allen Griffin and David McKeague received confirmation votes in June.) She was confirmed unanimously, 97-0, with both Michigan senators ultimately voting in her favor. Her confirmation came almost exactly four years after her initial nomination. Neilson was the seventh judge nominated to the Sixth Circuit by Bush and confirmed by the United States Senate.