SAN FRANCISCO — The United States Senate on Wednesday voted 50-49 to confirm President Joe Biden’s nomination of Jennifer Sung to serve as a U.S. circuit judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Upon taking her oath, Sung will become the first Asian American woman to assume one of Oregon’s seats for the Ninth Circuit.
Sung was nominated for the judgeship on July 13, 2021, and had her hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 14, 2021. Following her oath, Sung will fill a judgeship created when Circuit Judge Susan P. Graber assumed senior status Wednesday.
Sung has been a board member of the Oregon Employment Relations Board since 2017. She was nominated to serve on the board by Gov. Kate Brown and was unanimously confirmed by the Oregon Senate and was reappointed with Senate confirmation to a second four-year term. Previously, Sung joined McKanna Bishop Joffe LLP, where she practiced from 2013 until she was appointed to the Oregon Employment Relations Board in 2017. Her practice primarily involved litigation in courts, administrative agencies and arbitrations. Before joining McKanna, Sung was a litigation associate at Altshuler Berzon LLP, where she engaged in complex civil litigation in state and federal court, including contractual disputes and class action employment cases. She represented litigants or amicus parties in several cases regarding the constitutionality of local, state and federal laws.
At the time of her Senate confirmation vote, Sung was serving as an executive committee member and secretary for the Oregon State Bar’s Labor and Employment Law Section. She also has been a member of the Oregon Asian Pacific American Bar Association, the Oregon Minority Lawyers Association and Oregon Women Lawyers. Formerly, she was a member of the AFL- CIO Lawyers Coordinating Committee (now AFL-CIO Union Lawyers Alliance), the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon, and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area.
Born in Edison, New Jersey, Sung received her Bachelor of Arts, with honors, from Oberlin College in 1994 and her Juris Doctor from Yale Law School in 2004.
Following law school, Sung clerked for Ninth Circuit Judge Betty Binns Fletcher from 2004 to 2005.
After completing her clerkship, Sung completed a two-year Skadden fellowship and served as counsel in the Economic Justice Project of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. She provided legal and policy analyses of local and state laws aimed at raising wage standards, increasing access to health care and improving work conditions for low-wage workers.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit had 10,455 new filings in calendar year 2020 ending December 31. All 29 authorized judgeships are currently filled. There are two future vacancies with a date to be determined.
Appointed under Article III of the U.S. Constitution, federal district court judges are nominated by the president, confirmed by the Senate and serve lifetime appointments upon good behavior.
Jennifer Sung
