By Karen Gleason
The Del Rio Division of the United States District Court, Western District of Texas, is about to get its second full-time district judge, U.S. District Judge Alia Moses has confirmed.
Moses told the 830 Times Friday a majority of the judges of the Western District have voted to move a vacancy from the El Paso Division to the Del Rio Division.
“Congress has not created slots for the courts at least since 2000. That was the last time they created slots and that was just for the border courts. That’s when the Western District received slots, which included one for the Del Rio Division. That’s when I came on board, in 2002, so it’s been 18-and-a-half years since we’ve had any new judgeships created,” Moses said.
“Every year they have bills to add judges, and every year those bills don’t make it through Congress, so we’ve never been able to get the (additional) judges that we need,” she added.
Moses pointed out the Western District of Texas has 13 active judges.
“That’s a small number of judges for the number of cases that we have,” she said.
“For the Del Rio Division, cases have been going up every year. In 2019, we had 3,229 criminal cases, but that ended up being about 3,400 criminal defendants, if I remember correctly, because some cases have multiple defendants,” Moses said.
“In 2020, we ended up getting up to 2,323 cases, and that was a slow year because of COVID,” Moses said.
A second full-time federal judge is needed in the Del Rio Division, Moses said, but she noted the vacancy was the result of a sad and unexpected event.
“Unfortunately, we lost one of our El Paso judges. He died unexpectedly in February, so that created a vacancy, and when there’s a vacancy, then the judges of the district decide whether that vacancy stays in the division or whether it gets moved to some other division, so I made the request to have that vacancy moved to the Del Rio Division, that the need was in the Del Rio Division,” Moses said.
The district’s judges then vote, and Moses said a majority of judges voted to move the vacancy to Del Rio.
“Once we voted on it, on April 16, then the process moved to the Judicial Council, which is the governing body, sort of, of the Fifth Circuit, and I sit on the council, and we had our meeting (on Thursday), and I made the presentation that they adopt our vote, which they did, unanimously,” Moses said.
“Now that notification goes officially to the court administrative office, who will then notify the White House that the opening is now in Del Rio, Texas,” she said.
The White House and Texas’ two senators, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, will then announce the vacancy.
“And because our senators are not from the party of the president, the Congressional Caucus will recommend a (candidate) to the White House, but that person will still have to be vetted through the senators, and the candidates will have to meet the qualifications on both sides,” she noted.
“Really, the White House and the two senators have to come together, but they have been doing that pretty well,” she said.
Moses said the new Del Rio judgeship could potentially be filled by the end of the year, but cautioned the retirement of one of the U.S. Supreme Court justices could delay the process.
Moses also said she would not have requested the transfer if there was anything less than full confidence in the El Paso judges.
“One of the things that our judges, our court, took into consideration was that even though we were increasing the load a little bit per judge in El Paso, we knew we had very competent judges in El Paso, who could easily handle that increase. That fact helped the court make a decision as well,” Moses said.
