Horan awaits confirmation vote
A Butler County judge who has been nominated twice for the federal bench in Pittsburgh is once again on the doorstep of being confirmed for a seat on U.S. District Court.
Judge Marilyn Horan’s name was presented to the full U.S. Senate on Wednesday, along with the names of 15 other individuals up for confirmation to various positions within the federal government.
The list presented Wednesday was comprised of nine potential federal district judges — including Horan and Judge Susan P. Baxter, who would also serve on the federal bench in Pittsburgh — one potential vice chairman of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors, a potential assistant attorney general, a potential assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and a potential assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
This isn’t the first time Horan, who has served as a judge in the county’s Court of Common Pleas since 1996, has been up for confirmation by the Senate.
In 2015 she and Baxter were nominated for the federal bench by President Barack Obama, but their confirmations languished on the floor of the chamber for months and were never voted upon.
Both were renominated by President Donald Trump in December 2017 and have received the support of both senators from Pennsylvania, Democrat Bob Casey and Republican Pat Toomey, who issued a joint news release calling their confirmations “critically important,” and noting that seats on the U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh have been vacant “far too long.”
It was unclear Thursday when the nominees might receive a confirmation vote from the Senate, and the offices of Toomey and Casey did not respond to messages seeking comment on the matter.
Horan received her juris doctorate in 1979 from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Penn State University in 1976. She has served in the county court’s civil division since 1996, and last year assumed administrative duties from President Judge Thomas Doerr, after Doerr recused himself from those duties following the filing of a lawsuit alleging sexual and workplace misconduct.
