President Trump’s judicial nominees from his first term have become some of the highest-performing judges in the nation. One of his most recent picks, Judge Matthew Byrne, for a district court seat in Ohio, will continue in that mold.
“The Constitutional Rights of the incredible people of Ohio are in good hands with Matt on the Federal Bench,” wrote President Trump in a Truth Social post announcing Byrne’s nomination. Judge Byrne’s record backs up those words.
Byrne currently serves on Ohio’s Twelfth District Court of Appeals, where he has developed a record as a careful jurist willing to address hard issues directly. He has also long been involved in the conservative legal movement, including the Federalist Society, where he served as president of the Cincinnati Lawyers Chapter. He has also been involved with the Pregnancy Center East, a pro-life, pregnancy crisis center in Ohio.
But Byrne’s nomination especially stands out because of one recent opinion. In March, Byrne authored the decision in In re S.B., a difficult permanent-custody case involving allegations of neglect, homelessness, domestic instability, educational failures, mental-health concerns, and a teenager struggling with gender and religious identity. The court ultimately affirmed the termination of parental rights based on the record and Ohio law. But Byrne took care to address something that should concern every parent: the state’s suggestion that a mother and father could be treated as unfit because they did not immediately and unquestioningly affirm their child’s asserted gender identity or preferred pronouns.
Byrne rejected that premise.
“There is no requirement in Ohio law,” he wrote, “that parents must unquestioningly accept and support their minor children’s claims of transsexual identity or preferred pronouns.” That statement is not some extremist sentiment—it’s a straightforward affirmation that parents do not lose their constitutional role because they respond to a child’s distress with caution rather than instant ideological compliance.
The court’s language was measured. Byrne did not say parents should be indifferent to a child’s struggles. To the contrary, he wrote that “[c]hildren who struggle with these issues deserve sober and sensitive guidance.” But sober and sensitive guidance is not the same thing as state-mandated affirmation. A parent’s duty is not to rubber-stamp every claim a minor child makes in a moment of confusion, pain, or development. A parent’s duty is to love, guide, protect, and make careful decisions in the child’s best interests. And Byrne’s opinion recognizes that.
Byrne also applied the same principle to religion. The opinion noted a possible suggestion that the parents should be faulted for not unquestioningly supporting their child’s rejection of the family’s Messianic Jewish faith. Byrne again rejected the idea that Ohio law required such a result. Parents remain free to guide their children in moral and religious formation. That, too, is not radical. It is the ordinary meaning of parental rights from the beginning of the American Republic.
This is what good judging looks like. Byrne did not ignore the facts. He did not even reflexively rule for the parents. In fact, the court affirmed the juvenile court’s decision terminating parental rights because the record supported that outcome. But he also refused to let a serious custody case become a vehicle for smuggling ideological assumptions into Ohio law. He separated the legal question from cultural pressure. That is judicial courage, joined to strong adherence to the rule of law.
And that courage is badly needed on the federal bench.
Trial judges are often the first, and sometimes the only, federal judges ordinary Americans ever encounter. They decide questions of religious liberty, free speech, parental rights, conscience, administrative power, criminal procedure, employment law, education, and the limits of government authority. A district judge who understands constitutional structure and individual liberty can make an enormous difference—not by pursuing political outcomes, but by ensuring that government actors stay within their lawful bounds. To that end, the Senate should resist the temptation to treat district-court seats as less important or as afterthoughts because they are the lowest tier of federal courts. The country needs judges who will both faithfully apply the law when it is easy and when it is hard, when the result is popular and when it is not.
The Senate Judiciary Committee should give Byrne a fair hearing and move his nomination promptly. The full Senate should confirm his nomination. Matthew Byrne is the type of principled jurist we need in the federal judiciary.
Jordan Lorence is Senior Counsel at First Liberty Institute, involved in strategic efforts to promote religious liberty through various projects.