Justice Julia Lipez presides over an attempted murder trial at Oxford County Superior Court in 2022. Andree Kehn/Sun Journal file photo

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted Thursday to endorse the confirmation of Maine Superior Court Justice Julia Lipez to fill a position on the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, which hears cases from Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Puerto Rico and Rhode Island.

The committee voted along party lines in an 11-10 vote without discussion.

If approved by the entire Senate in September following the August recess, Lipez would fill the position of William Kayatta, who announced in November that he was stepping down. Lipez’s father, Kermit Lipez, serves on the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Her endorsement comes after the Senate’s confirmation on Tuesday of Portland attorney Stacey Neumann as a federal judge for the District of Maine.

Lipez was initially on the committee’s agenda in July, but her vote was postponed by the Republican minority, a routine move for those on the agenda for the first time.

She was nominated by President Biden in May and had her first hearing with the judiciary committee at the end of June. At the hearing, Lipez faced some criticism from Republicans on the committee about what they considered to be light sentences for cases involving sexual abuse of a minor and death of an infant.

Several people submitted letters of recommendation on her behalf, including the deputy director of Preble Street, a Maine nonprofit that supports people experiencing homelessness and poverty; the former national domestic violence coordinator at the Department of Justice; the Maine Coalition Against Sexual Assault; Attorney General Aaron Frey; and Gov. Janet Mills.

In particular, Lipez was lauded for her 2013 leadership of anti-human trafficking efforts for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maine and her work with victims in sexual violence cases.

Prior to becoming a Superior Court justice in 2022, Lipez was a prosecutor with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maine, where she oversaw appeals cases for her last three years. She also practiced private law at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP in New York before that and clerked for a federal appeals judge in New York in 2006, after receiving her J.D. from Stanford Law School.