Senate confirms Joe Biden’s historic pick for Sacramento-area federal judgeship

Andrew Sheeler
·2 min read
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SENATE CONFIRMS FEDERAL JUDGE FOR SACRAMENTO AREA

Via Gillian Brassil...

Judge Dena M. Coggins was confirmed by the U.S. Senate last week to the federal court that covers Sacramento.

Coggins, who since 2021 has been a judge on the Sacramento County Superior Court, will be the first Black woman to serve as a federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California. She is also of Asian American descent.

Coggins will officially join the federal bench in September when Chief District Judge Kimberly J. Mueller takes senior status, a reduced workload that judges can take after meeting certain age and years of service requirements. A Sacramento native, Coggins will remain there as part of the federal bench.

Since 2023, Coggins has been presiding judge of the juvenile court in the Sacramento Count Superior Court. Before this, she was an administrative law judge at California’s Office of Administrative Hearings, which oversees hearings for state and local agencies.

She also previously served as a deputy legal affairs secretary to former Gov. Jerry Brown and was a supervising attorney on the California Victim Compensation Board.

She earned her bachelor’s degree at California State University, Sacramento, in 2003 and her juris doctor at University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law, in 2006.

The Eastern District covers federal court matters from the California-Oregon border through Bakersfield along the Nevada border. There are four federal court districts in California.

Coggins was the 201st judicial nominee that President Joe Biden has had confirmed by the Senate. Biden has picked more women, people of color and LGBTQ people as judicial nominees than any U.S. president, according to The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. Among them is U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman on the nation’s highest bench.

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