A follow-up to this post from a week ago:
Yesterday President Trump announced his intent to nominate two Florida supreme court justices—Barbara Lagoa and Robert J. Luck—to Eleventh Circuit seats. Lagoa and Luck would fill the Florida seats being vacated by Gerald Tjoflat and Stanley Marcus. (It’s unclear to me who will be nominated to which seat—not that it matters much.)
Tjoflat announced his decision to take senior status last month, and Marcus announced his decision just last week. Kudos to President Trump and the White House counsel’s office for moving so swiftly to fill the seats with two outstanding nominees.
As noted in my previous post, when Marcus’s seat is filled, the Eleventh Circuit will flip to a 7-5 majority of Republican appointees. At the outset of the Trump administration, it had an 8-3 Democratic majority (with one vacancy).
The only appellate vacancies for which nominations haven’t yet been announced are the “future vacancies” for the Ninth Circuit seats of Carlos Bea (California) and Jay Bybee (Nevada).