J. Michelle Childs: 5 things to know about Biden's potential Supreme Court nominee

President Biden says he hopes to announce his pick to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer on the U.S. Supreme Court by the end of February — and will fulfill his campaign promise of appointing a Black woman to the nation’s highest court. J. Michelle Childs, a 55-year-old U.S. District Court judge from South Carolina, has emerged as one of the leading candidates for Biden’s historic nomination.

Here are 5 things to know about Childs.

Her father was a police officer

Childs was born in Detroit. Her father, a police officer, died when she was a teenager. Her mother then decided to move her and her sister to South Carolina due to rising crime in Detroit.

Childs initially thought she might pursue a career in psychology, she said in a 2020 Zoom panel with the South Carolina Bar. But a mock trial competition during high school pushed her toward the law.

Childs spent much of her early legal career at a private law firm in Columbia, S.C., where she became the first Black female partner in a major law firm in the state. At the firm, she specialized in labor and employment law, focusing part of her practice on representing employers dealing with allegations of race-based and gender-based discrimination and other alleged civil rights violations. She also worked with employees who needed legal representation as they attempted to unionize.

In 2000, she married Floyd Angus, a gastroenterologist who practices in Sumter, S.C. The couple have one child, Julianna, who is now in her teens.

She’s a favorite of Rep. Jim Clyburn

The No. 3 Democrat in the House helped convince Biden to pledge to name a Black woman to the Supreme Court and has been lobbying Biden on Childs’s behalf for at least a year.

Clyburn’s endorsement of Biden during the 2020 Democratic primary is widely credited with helping to rescue his campaign after bruising losses in Iowa and New Hampshire — so any court candidate backed by the South Carolina lawmaker was bound to be a serious contender.

Appearing on MSNBC on Monday, Clyburn said he believes “very strongly” that Childs has the personal and professional résumé to be an “ideal” candidate.

“She’s got it all,” Clyburn said.

Sen. Lindsey Graham is a fan

Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, has spoken glowingly of Childs.

“I can’t think of a better person for President Biden to consider for the Supreme Court than Michelle Childs,” Graham said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “She has wide support in our state. She is considered to be a fair-minded, highly gifted jurist. She’s one of the most decent people I’ve ever met.”

Graham, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, stopped just short of promising to vote for Childs if she becomes Biden’s nominee. But the praise is sure to draw notice as the White House navigates the fraught politics of Supreme Court nominations. Any Republican votes for Biden’s pick would give the White House a bipartisan victory ahead of the midterms, and it would relieve the pressure on Democrats of having to secure every one of their votes in the 50-50 chamber.

She was nominated to the federal bench by President Obama

In 2009, President Barack Obama nominated Childs to the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, and she sailed through the confirmation process in the Senate. Her nomination was confirmed by a voice vote.

Last month, Biden nominated Childs to the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The Senate Judiciary Committee quietly postponed her confirmation hearing following Breyer’s announcement that he was retiring.

The White House then confirmed that Childs is a candidate to replace Breyer, saying that the judge is “among multiple individuals under consideration for the Supreme Court.”

Childs is the only person that the White House has publicly named as a potential candidate for the historic Supreme Court appointment.

She went to a public law school

Childs received a bachelor’s degree from the University of South Florida in 1988, and her law degree from the University of South Carolina School of Law as well as her master’s in personnel and employment relations from the University of South Carolina School of Business in 1991.

The fact that Childs did not attend an Ivy League law school distinguishes her from most Supreme Court nominees. Eight of the nine current justices went to either Harvard or Yale. One justice — Amy Coney Barrett — attended Notre Dame.

For Clyburn, Childs’s non-Ivy schooling is a strength, not a weakness.

“I’m afraid that some in our party are lapsing into this notion that can only result in an elitist court, so that’s a problem for me,” Clyburn told the Post and Courier newspaper. “Clarence Thomas is an Ivy League school graduate. Thurgood Marshall was an HBCU graduate. Which would you prefer?”

Graham also praised Childs for attending a non-Ivy institution.

“It would be good for the court to have somebody who’s not at Harvard or Yale,” Graham said. “She’s been a workers’ comp judge. She’s highly qualified. She’s a good character. And we’ll see how she does if she’s nominated. But I cannot say anything bad about Michelle Childs. She is an awesome person.”

Graham dismissed criticism from some fellow Republicans, including Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who say that Biden’s pledge to appoint a Black woman to the Supreme Court amounts to affirmative action.

“Put me in the camp of making sure the court and other institutions look like America,” Graham told CBS. “Michelle Childs is incredibly qualified. There’s no affirmative action component if you pick her.”