U.S. Circuit Judge Duane Benton, a longtime conservative voice on the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, has announced he will move to senior status — a semi-retirement that hands President Donald Trump his first judicial vacancy to fill in his second term.
Benton, 75, informed the White House of his decision in a letter, stating his intention to “continue to render substantial judicial service as a senior judge.” The precise date of his transition has not been set, but the federal judiciary’s official list now marks the St. Louis-based court as heading toward its first open seat in years.
A former Missouri Supreme Court justice, Benton was appointed to the federal bench in 2004 by then-President George W. Bush. His two-decade tenure has placed him at the center of several consequential rulings that defined the 8th Circuit’s deeply conservative character.
Among his recent opinions was an August decision upholding Arkansas’s ban on gender-affirming medical care for minors — a ruling that underscored the court’s readiness to back state legislatures on contested social issues. Benton wrote that there was no “historical foundation” for recognizing a parental right to pursue such treatments if a state prohibits them.
In another high-profile decision in September, Benton led a three-judge panel that struck down a Biden-era Department of Energy rule affecting how fuel economy for electric vehicles is measured. Earlier in July, he authored an opinion invalidating Minnesota’s age restriction for carrying handguns in public, writing pointedly that “the Second Amendment’s plain text does not have an age limit.”
The 8th Circuit, which oversees federal appeals from seven Midwestern states, remains one of the most reliably conservative courts in the country — ten of its eleven active judges were appointed by Republican presidents, including four by Trump during his first term.
The White House has not yet announced a nominee for Benton’s seat, but a spokesperson confirmed that Trump intends to “move quickly” to fill judicial vacancies with “qualified nominees who will uphold our Constitution and the rule of law.”
With Benton stepping back but not away, Trump’s next pick is poised to shape the ideological balance of a court that already wields outsized influence on key national issues.
