President George W. Bush’s march to pack the courts with activist, ultraconservative nominees is expected to pick up speed with the Senate back at work April 28. Senate Republican leaders are likely to push for votes on a slate of troubling nominees for lifetime seats on the U.S. Court of Appeals, which issues final decisions on all but the approximately 75 cases heard each year by the U.S. Supreme Court.
“This administration cares less about nominating moderate, consensus judges than on packing the courts with extremist judges who threaten to roll back workers’ rights and civil rights and whose views are outside the mainstream on issues of importance to working families,” AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said earlier this year. (Take action to stop Bush's court-packing plan.)
Priscilla Owen, Miguel Estrada, Carolyn Kuhl and several other nominees share troubling legal records on civil rights, workers’ rights and other fundamental protections. Several of these Bush nominees support “federalism” challenges to Congress’ power to pass laws establishing a floor of minimum protections for all Americans. Owen and other Bush nominees have legal track records favoring Big Business over workers and consumers. These nominees threaten to reshape the courts for decades to come—against the interests of workers and their unions.
Bush and his Senate allies complain that the effort to examine judicial candidates’ records thoroughly and to oppose some of the most ideological nominees has delayed the filling of court vacancies. But the U.S. Constitution says the Senate is supposed to provide its “advice and consent” on the president’s judicial nominees. And the vast majority of Bush’s nominees have been confirmed quickly: More than 100 of Bush’s federal court nominees were confirmed during the Democrat-controlled Senate of the 107th Congress. Another 18 have been confirmed this year.
In contrast, during the Clinton administration, Republicans refused to proceed with hearings and committee votes for more than 50 mainstream nominees, whose nominations eventually lapsed without ever being allowed a Senate vote.
Owen: ‘Blatant Disregard for Injured Workers’
The Texas AFL-CIO and other labor groups, along with consumer, civil rights, women’s and a host of other organizations, have been fighting for years to defeat Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen’s nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. According to the nonprofit group Texans for Public Justice (TPJ), Owen “has authored and joined a body of activist, right-wing opinions that are out of the mainstream.” TPJ’s report found that Owen’s “result-oriented opinions overwhelmingly favor defendants over plaintiffs, businesses over consumers and judges over juries.”
Owen was defeated in her bid last year for a seat on the 5th Circuit when the Senate Judiciary Committee rejected her nomination, but Bush re-nominated Owen for the same seat in January. With their new one-vote majority on the committee, Republicans recently approved Owen’s nomination on a party-line vote.
Estrada: Silent About Where He Stands
Senate Republicans have made four unsuccessful attempts to push the nomination of Miguel Estrada to the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. These efforts have been thwarted by Senate Democrats, who are refusing to move Estrada’s nomination because both Estrada and the Bush administration have refused to answer questions about his legal philosophy and provide documents and memos he wrote while serving in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of the Solicitor General.
The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), the Congressional Hispanic and Black caucuses, unions and a range of Latino, civil rights, women’s and environmental groups have joined to fight the Estrada nomination.
“Miguel Estrada is a mystery nominee who refuses to answer questions—a nominee who has refused to tell the Senate where he stands on civil rights...workers’ rights...constitutional rights....Working people can’t trust a silent nominee to assure us that the federal courts will protect our right to a fair and safe workplace, to minimum wages and the right to organize a union,” AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson said at a March 5 MALDEF news conference.
Kuhl: Supported Weakening Workers' RightsAs a deputy solicitor general in the Reagan administration, Carolyn Kuhl urged the Supreme Court to overrule its precedent on “associational standing,” which allows unions, environmental groups and other associations to protect the rights of their members in court. The court rejected Kuhl’s argument without dissent but had Kuhl’s position been adopted, it would have been catastrophic, according to members of environmental, women’s, union, civil rights and other organizations opposing Kuhl’s nomination to the 9th Circuit.
Such a ruling would have meant environmental, union and other citizen organizations would not have been able to “represent their members’ interests to hold Big Business accountable, be it polluting drinking water or trampling workers’ rights,” according to the Sierra Club,which opposed California Superior Court Judge Kohl’s nomination.
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