Biden judicial nominee says she didn't write diversity recommendations from committee she co-chaired

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Judge Tamika Renee Montgomery-Reeves, nominated by President Biden to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, faced a grilling on the recommendations of a committee she once co-chaired during her confirmation hearing on Wednesday.

Several Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee pressed Montgomery-Reeves on recommendations made in a report from the Delaware Supreme Court’s Diversity Strategic Planning Steering Committee, ultimately leading to her distancing herself from them by pointing out she neither wrote nor edited any of them despite being committee co-chair.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, pointed to a recommendation that a prospective lawyer be able to use clerkships and recommendations instead of taking the bar exam, which the committee said was a "barrier" to Black and Hispanic people.

"Do you believe that there's something about Hispanics and African-Americans that prevents them from taking the bar exam and doing well on it?" Cruz, who is Hispanic, asked Montgomery-Reeves, who is Black.

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"No, I do not," she said.

Cruz pressed her on whether she believes the country needs attorneys who have not passed the bar. At first, she noted that the Delaware Supreme Court has not adopted any of the report's recommendations. The Republican senator asked again, and she said the court "would need to study very closely, that recommendation," and that the court has not done so.

"As co-chair of the committee that made the recommendation, did you examine the recommendations of the committee before it made them?" Cruz asked.

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"I saw the recommendations, I did not make an edit to any recommendation," Montgomery-Reeves said.

Judicial nominee Tamika Montgomery-Reeves is sworn in during her Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2022. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Soon after Cruz's allotted time, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., grilled the nominee on a different recommendation made in the same report. This one claimed that the portraits of white judges and justices should be removed as a way to "reduce implicit bias and identity threat in the court environment."

"Can you explain to me what identity threat is and why getting rid of portraits of judges and justices who have served on the courts would help with that?" Hawley asked.

As it turned out, the judge could not.

"I am not familiar with the term ‘identity threat,’" Montgomery-Reeves said.

When Hawley noted that it was her committee's report, she explained again that while she co-chaired the committee, she did not draft the recommendations.

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Following Hawley's questioning, committee chairman Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., spoke out against his Republican colleagues for grilling the nominee on something that he felt was "pretty clear," stating that Montgomery-Reeves received the recommendations, but she did not make them. 

Hawley pointed out that this was not accurate, and Montgomery-Reeves then clarified that the recommendations came from her committee, but they were made by subgroups that submitted them to her, and she did not change any of the recommendations "at all" before submitting them to the Delaware Supreme Court in the committee's report.

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Sen. John Kennedy,' R-La., pushed back against Durbin, saying that he himself was not interested in the report, he just wanted to know if the nominee agreed with the recommendations and that Montgomery-Reeves would not answer.

"And I don't think you would have from a Trump nominee either," Durbin said.