Pearson expected to be confirmed for district court

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Benita Pearson

Staff/wire report

WASHINGTON

A year after being nominated by the president as a Youngstown-based federal district court judge, Benita Pearson is expected to be confirmed for the job by the U.S. Senate today.

Senate Republicans have agreed to waive debate on Pearson’s selection, and a vote to confirm her likely will take place today, said Meghan Dubyak, spokeswoman for U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown.

Brown, a Democrat from Avon, recommended Pearson, of Solon, a federal magistrate based in Akron, for the position in July 2009.

After a blockade since September, Senate Republicans have agreed to let at least 19 of President Barack Obama’s noncontroversial judicial nominees win confirmation in the waning days of the congressional session.

Pearson is among those to be confirmed, Dubyak said.

In exchange, Democrats have committed to not seek votes on four others, according to officials familiar with the deal.

Among the four is Goodwin Liu, a law-school dean seen as a potential future Supreme Court pick, whose current nomination to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has sparked strong criticism from Republicans.

As part of the arrangement, the Senate has approved 10 judges in the past few days without a single dissenting vote.

Pearson, 47, has been waiting since February, when the committee approved her 12-6 along party lines with all Democrats voting for her and all Republicans voting against her.

The district-court judicial seat has been empty since Judge Peter C. Economus went to senior status in July 2009.

That has left the responsibilities of handling the federal-district-court docket in Youngstown to U.S. Magistrate Judge George J. Limbert and to federal judges based in Akron and Cleveland.

The agreement on judicial confirmation was worked out between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and his Republican counterpart, U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, with the knowledge of the White House, officials said. Spokesmen for the two Senate leaders declined to comment.

Officials described the maneuvering on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to discuss private conversations.

Democrats filibustered several of President George W. Bush’s conservative nominees, refusing to allow a vote on some for years.

The logjam was broken in the spring of 2005 in a compromise that allowed some to be confirmed while a smaller number were jettisoned.

More recently, Democrats have accused Republicans of delaying confirmation of even noncontroversial nominees advanced by Obama by refusing to permit them to come to a vote without a time-consuming process than can take three days on the Senate floor.