WASHINGTON — The Senate voted Tuesday to confirm Nicole Berner as a federal judge, putting the longtime union lawyer and former Planned Parenthood litigator into a lifetime seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit.
The final vote was 50 to 47. No on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, nine were appointed by Democratic presidents. Berner is replacing another Democrat-appointed judge, Diana Gribbon Motz, who assumed senior status and scaled back her duties in September 2022.
Beyond that, Berner’s background with Planned Parenthood matters because this court has jurisdiction over some states with restrictive abortion laws.
Any appeals of federal lawsuits relating to abortion rights in North Carolina, South Carolina or West Virginia will end up before the court that Berner now sits on. Each of these states has varying degrees of restrictions, if not outright bans, on access to abortion. If Berner is randomly assigned to any these potential cases, she brings the expertise of someone familiar with legal fights over women’s reproductive rights.
On more personal matters, Berner is a dual American Israeli citizen. When she lived in Israel, she fought for years and ultimately won a case before Israel’s Supreme Court that changed the country’s law to require the government to recognize two moms as the full parents of a child.
She wasn’t just the attorney in that case ― she was the litigant.
“That ruling is considered one of the most important LGBTQ rights decisions in Israeli history,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who recommended Berner to the White House, said in her confirmation hearing in December.
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According to Van Hollen, Berner said that case taught her “how humbling and terrifying it is to be a litigant defending the most important thing she has.”
