The White House is vetting Jane L. Kelly as a potential nominee to fill the seat left by the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
Kelly, 51, is a career public defender turned appellate judge. The FBI has been conducting background interviews on her, according to an anonymous source who spoke to the New York Times.
The White House declined to comment. Kelly said through a judicial assistant in her Cedar Rapids, Iowa, chambers that she was not granting interviews on the matter.
The Senate quickly and unanimously confirmed her to her current post on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit three years ago.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has said they will not hold hearings on any Supreme Court nominee put forth by Obama, though he praised Kelly in a Senate floor speech in 2013.
“This is something the American people should decide,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said on Wednesday. “President Obama still has every right to nominate someone on his way out the door. The Senate also has every right to withhold its consent.”
If selected and confirmed, Kelly would be the only public defender to serve on the nation’s highest court. She attended Harvard Law School, where she was a classmate of Obama’s.
