New Jersey Globe reports that President Biden's nomination of Adeel Mangi to the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals will not be approved before the current Congressional session ends. Mangi, born in Pakistan, would have been the first Muslim to sit on a federal Circuit Court. Mangi is a partner in the New York law firm of Patterson Belknap whose website says in part:
Mr. Mangi has ... litigated numerous high-profile civil rights cases. These included some of the most closely watched religious freedom cases of the Trump era, which involved two different Muslim communities denied permission to build mosques in Bernards Township and Bayonne.... Both cases eventually resulted in settlements under which the mosques were approved and the municipalities involved paid significant compensation to the affected Islamic groups.
New Jersey Globe reports:
... Mangi came before the Senate Judiciary Committee for two fraught hearings in December 2023 and January 2024.... Republicans interrogated Mangi over his role on an advisory board for the Center for Security, Race and Rights at Rutgers Law School, a controversial group that they said had become an antisemitic, anti-American hotbed under Mangi’s nose.
Top Senate Democrats ... defended Mangi from the attacks, noting that his role at the center was a limited one and accusing Republicans of using Islamophobia to sink Mangi’s history-making nomination. But three Democratic senators ... came out publicly against Mangi, which in such a closely divided Senate was enough to deny him the votes needed for confirmation.
