Carnes was nominated by President George H. W. Bush on January 27, 1992 for the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit to a seat vacated by Judge Frank Minis Johnson. To Carnes' opponents, he was a poor choice to succeed Judge Johnson, a hero of the civil rights movement who had declared that the segregated buses of Montgomery, Alabama were illegal. Some compared replacing Johnson with Carnes to Bush's earlier decision to replace Thurgood Marshall with Clarence Thomas. Nonetheless, his nomination might have sailed through the Senate if not for the Rodney King incident, which encouraged Senate Democrats to use Carnes' nomination as a chance to stump against racism in the criminal justice system.