Alison Nathan: Senate promotes Ghislaine Maxwell’s judge to appellate court

The U.S. Senate on Wednesday voted to promote the Manhattan federal judge who oversaw the sex abuse trial of British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell to become only the second openly LGBT+ woman to serve on a federal appeals court.

The Senate voted 49-47 to elevate Alison Nathan to the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, capping off a day in which the Democratic-led chamber confirmed five of President Joe Biden’s other judicial nominees to district court positions.

They included Hector Gonzalez, a Cuban-born former prosecutor who chairs the law firm Dechert’s global litigation practice. The Senate voted 52-45 vote to make him a federal judge in Brooklyn.

Nathan was nominated by Biden in November at the recommendation of U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the senior senator from New York, who had earlier convinced former President Barack Obama to make her a district judge in 2011.

Her nomination to the 2nd Circuit came in the midst of Maxwell’s trial. Maxwell was convicted on Dec. 29 on five of the six counts she faced for helping the late financier Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse underage girls.

Maxwell, who pleaded not guilty, is seeking to set aside the verdict on multiple grounds, which the judge is reviewing. Despite her promotion, Nathan is expected to continue presiding over her pending criminal cases.

Nathan, 49, is the fourth of Biden’s nominees to win confirmation to join the 2nd Circuit. Beth Robinson, who was confirmed to the circuit last year, became the first openly LGBT+ woman to serve on an federal appeals court.

Nathan succeeds U.S. Circuit Judge Rosemary Pooler, who in October said she planned to take senior status, a form of semi-retirement for judges. Presidents can fill the seats of judges who take senior status.

Biden has yet to nominate anyone to succeed two other 2nd Circuit judges who plan to take senior status. Republican appointees fill six of the 13 seats on the court, which hears cases from New York, Connecticut and Vermont.

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in December, Nathan said her record in more than 3,000 cases “demonstrated the type of judge that I am” and called the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, for whom she clerked, a model.

But Republicans during that hearing questioned her decisions to grant inmates compassionate release after the COVID-19 pandemic began in early 2020 and raised concerns about her stances on such issues as immigration and gun rights.