State Judge Ed Artau elevated to South Florida’s federal bench in Senate vote
Ed Artau, a state appeals court judge in Palm Beach County, has been elevated to the federal bench in South Florida with a boost from the Republican majority in the U.S. Senate.
Artau, 59, the son of Cuban immigrants, was confirmed Monday in a 50-43 Senate vote along party lines.
In May, President Donald Trump nominated Artau to be a federal judge in the Southern District of Florida, praising his career as a state appellate judge, a prior circuit court judge and previously a general counsel to the South Florida Water Management District.
But Artau’s nomination was fraught with ethical questions raised by Democrats and critics after a major news organization reported that he refused to throw out a defamation case brought by Trump against the Pulitzer Prize Board. This year, Trump sued board members after they rejected his request to rescind the award that they gave to the New York Times and the Washington Post for reporting on alleged Russian election interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Politico reported that Artau, while sitting on a panel of the Fourth District Court of Appeal, discussed his desire for a nomination to the federal bench before ruling to allow Trump’s defamation case to proceed in Florida.
“A Florida state judge was lobbying for a seat on the federal bench,” reported Politico, which broke the news. “After he sided with the president in a defamation case, Donald Trump gave him one.”
Citing a timeline, Politico reported that Artau met the general counsel for Republican U.S. Sen. Rick Scott of Florida in November 2024 to discuss his interest in the federal judicial appointment after Trump’s election that month. On Feb. 12, Artau concurred in the state appellate panel’s 3-0 decision allowing Trump’s lawsuit against the Pulitzer Prize Board to continue in Florida. The president’s suit called for the overturning of a landmark Supreme Court case that made it harder for public officials to sue journalists
Artau met with the White House counsel’s office about his interest in the judicial position on Feb. 27. He was nominated by Trump for the South Florida federal judgeship in late May.
Artau said in his Senate disclosure form that no one involved in the selection process discussed pending cases or legal issues with him in a way that could be interpreted as seeking assurances about his position.
Artau, who attended Georgetown University Law Center, will fill a vacancy created by outgoing U.S. District Judge Robert N. Scola Jr. Scola, based in Miami, who became a senior judge last year with a reduced caseload, plans to retire from the bench in early October. He had previously served as a Miami-Dade Circuit Court judge, starting in 1995.
Artau is among about 20 federal district court judges appointed by Trump since he took office for a second term in January. But only a handful of his nominees have been confirmed by the Senate because of resistance from Democrats.
“There are a lot of nominees in the pipeline, but only a few have been confirmed,” University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias said Monday, noting the judicial appointments are from Republican-dominated states. “It’s moving pretty slowly.”
Artau has been a longtime member of the Republican Party and the conservative Federalist Society, which exerts a significant influence on judicial appointments at the state and federal levels.
At the same time, Trump also nominated four other state judges for vacancies on the federal bench in the Middle District of Florida. They are: Kyle Dudek, Anne-Leigh Gaylord Moe, John Guard and Jordan Pratt.