Alliance for Justice on Friday sent out this judicial selection update:

The Senate has returned to active work, and on September 9 a Judiciary Committee hearing was held on five district court nominees, who now have a chance of confirmation before the Senate halts business for the year in two weeks:

• Clark Waddoups for the District of Utah
• Michael M. Anello for the Southern District of California
• Mary Stenson Scriven for the Middle District of Florida
• Christine M. Arguello and Philip A. Brimmer for the District of Colorado

The nominations to the Colorado federal court moved forward after a deal was made between the Senators Wayne Allard (R) and Ken Salazar(D). In the meantime, President Bush has nominated two new judges, one to a district court vacancy, and one, Loretta Preska, to a vacancy on the Second Circuit. The nomination of Judge Preska, an archconservative district judge in the Southern District of New York, was presumably made simply to inflate claims that the Senate is not considering pending nominees. In keeping with President Bush?s defiance of Senate traditions and with no consideration for bipartisanship, the nomination was made without consultation with either of New York?s Senators, Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton. (more…)

The nomination of Richard Honaker to the U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming is still awaiting a vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee and we need Senator Feinstein’s vote to stop the nomination.

Honaker is a staunch anti-choice activist and someone who has also served for years as a Board member of a right-wing, anti-gay organization. He most certainly does not deserve a lifetime appointment as a powerful federal judge.

We’ve asked you to call Senator Feinstein’s D.C. office. Now please also call her state office nearest you. She and her staff need to keep hearing from constituents that she should vote NO on the Honaker nomination.

Find the state office closest to you here

Richard Honaker has worked vigorously to undermine women’s reproductive freedom. Mr. Honaker has written that abortion is “wrong, and no one should have the right to do what is wrong.” As a Wyoming state legislator, Mr. Honaker in 1991 introduced a bill entitled the “Human Life Protection Act” that would have prohibited abortion, except to protect a woman’s life or in cases of  incest or rape, but then only if the victim had reported the crime within five days of its occurrence — a highly unrealistic requirement in many instances.

He has a disturbing record on government neutrality toward religion and a legal philosophy that threatens church-state separation.  Mr. Honaker believes that the Bible is “true in law,” and has publicly disparaged non-”Judeo-Christians” as unable to sustain “political liberty.”

Mr. Honaker is a longtime board member of the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) — an extreme right-wing, anti-gay organization that, despite its name, has taken liberty-restricting positions on a range of matters that have nothing to do with home-schooling. A report in Salon quoted one observer of the Christian right as noting that “HSLDA and similarly motivated organizations . . . are major players behind recent efforts to mandate creationist curriculum and attack environmental education, sex-education, and multicultural classroom material.” And HSLDA has created an “army of eager teen activists . . . called Generation Joshua,” to “help defeat the giants of abortion, same-sex marriage and judicial activism.”

Please call now and urge Senator Feinstein to do everything she can to OPPOSE the confirmation of Richard Honaker in Committee.

You can let us know how the call goes with our online call report form at http://pfaw.kintera.org/CallReport.

Why should you care about a federal judge in another state? As a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming, Honaker’s bad decisions could be looked to by judges in other states as persuasive precedent, and thus could affect all Americans. Women’s rights advocates in Wyoming as well as leading national women’s rights organizations, including NOW, the National Women’s Law Center and NARAL Pro-Choice America, also oppose Mr. Honaker’s confirmation, as do many other groups, including Americans United For Separation of Church and State and the Alliance for Justice.

For more on Richard Honaker and source material for the statements contained here, please download PFAW’s letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee in opposition to Mr. Honaker’s confirmation.

The California Coalition for Civil Rights sent Sen. Feinstein a letter yesterday asking her to oppose Richard Honaker’s nomination:

As one of only three district court judges in Wyoming, Mr. Honaker would wield considerable power over the people of the state if confirmed. He would also be eligible to sit by designation on the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. Mr. Honaker’s work and writings cast doubt upon his ability to set aside his personal beliefs in order to respect established legal principles and the dictates of higher federal courts. His refusal to tender records of his legislative work shows disdain for transparency in government and disrespect for the Senate’s important role in the “advice and consent” process. Because Mr. Honaker has failed to demonstrate that he will respect the legal principles important to all Californians, and indeed, all Americans, we urge you to reject his nomination.

Read the full letter below:

(more…)

Visit the Credo Action website to send a letter to your Senator.

President Bush has nominated Richard Honaker for a lifetime appointment as a federal judge to the District Court in Wyoming. Richard Honaker has worked tirelessly to ban abortion and has publically stated that abortion is “wrong, and no one should have the right to do what is wrong.” Richard Honaker is one of Bush’s most anti-choice nominees to date and shouldn’t receive Senate confirmation.

As a representative in the Wyoming State Legislature, Honaker introduced the “Human Life Protection Act” in 1991. The act would have criminalized abortion from the moment of conception except in the cases of rape, incest, or to protect the woman’s life. Even women who were the victims of rape or incest would have been denied abortions unless they reported the incidents to the authorities within five days. When the act failed to pass, Honaker reintroduced it in 1992 and it was again defeated. In 1994, Honaker served as counsel to the Unseen Hands Prayer Circle, which formed to place the “Human Life Protection Act” on the statewide ballot.

In one year President Bush will be out of the White House. We must ensure that President Bush doesn’t get anymore of his anti-choice zealots on the federal bench. Tell your Senators to reject the nomination of Richard Honaker.

(For more information about the Honaker nomination, please visit the websites of NARAL Pro-Choice America and the Alliance for Justice.)

Visit the NARAL Pro-Choice America site to send a letter urging your Senator to oppose a fierce anti-choice nominee to the federal court:

As a constituent, I am writing to voice my strong opposition to the nomination of Richard Honaker to the U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming.

Honaker has spent his career fighting to deny women access to safe, legal reproductive-health services. He publicly and actively opposes abortion, calling it equivalent to murder, and tried three times to ban abortion in Wyoming.

By nominating Richard Honaker to a lifetime judgeship, President Bush has shown yet again that he is totally out of step with the views of mainstream America. Honaker led the push for a ballot measure to ban abortion, which Wyoming voters resoundingly rejected. Now I urge you to do the same with this nomination.

Please refuse to consider this nomination and instead call on President Bush to fill the post with a fair-minded individual who shares America’s mainstream views of constitutional rights, including the constitutional right to choose.

As the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade approaches, so much hangs in the balance. Women’s access to safe, legal reproductive-health choices has been attacked repeatedly by the Bush administration.

Now is the time to stand up to Bush. Please affirm your commitment to the fundamental American values of freedom and privacy by rejecting the nomination of Richard Honaker today.

In a January 29, 2008, letter to Sen. Patrick Leahy, chair of the Senate’s Committee on the Judiciary, Alliance for Justice president Nan Aron urges the committee to reject the nomination of Richard Honaker to the District Court for the District of Wyoming.

Dear Chairman Leahy:

Alliance for Justice urges the Senate to reject the nomination of Richard H. Honaker for the District Court for the District of Wyoming. Throughout his career, Honaker has actively worked to undermine a woman’s right to reproductive freedom.  We believe that his zealous advocacy for doing away with such a fundamental right, along with extreme statements he has made about the place of religion in American life, raises serious questions about his fitness for a lifetime appointment to the federal bench.

As a representative in the Wyoming State Legislature, Honaker introduced the “Human Life Protection Act” in 1991. The Act would have criminalized abortion from the moment of conception except in the cases of rape, incest, or to protect the woman’s life. Even women who were the victims of rape or incest would have been denied abortions unless they reported the incidents to the authorities within five days. When the Act failed to pass, Honaker reintroduced it in 1992 and it was again defeated. In 1994, Honaker served as counsel to the Unseen Hands Prayer Circle, which formed to place the “Human Life Protection Act” on the statewide ballot.

Honaker’s public statements and written work also raise serious concerns about his ability, if confirmed, to remain objective in cases in which Supreme Court precedent conflicts with his religious beliefs.

In 1992, Honaker wrote a series of two articles for The Reformed Herald about the cultural clash in the United States.  The articles included the following quotes:

·    I came to know that if the Bible is true, if Christianity is true, then it is true in family life. It is true in economics. It is true in law, and it is true in all facets of human endeavor.

·    The idea of neutrality relied upon the myth that law and government can function without relying upon shared moral premised. The upshot of neutrality was that some moral premises could be considered in the formulation of law and policy, but that Christian moral premises could not.

·    Autonomy is the new secular religion sanctioned by The United States Supreme Court. The Supreme Court no longer talks about America as a Christian nation or about the Christian underpinnings of the law. In moving even beyond the pale of neutrality, it openly advances the idea of autonomy, stating that “personal dignity and autonomy are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.”

·    It doesn’t take a legal scholar to perceive that the nation’s highest court, its universities and law schools, its political institutions, and its news media, have moved racially [sic] away from a Christian base toward a secular base in which man, not God, is the creator of values, of rights, of law, and of justice. It is less clear to what degree these institutions reflect changes in views of the American people, changes in the state of the American mind - or to what degree the institutions of led the charge.

·    We are seeing vicious political battles over judicial appointments that would not have occurred had the Court not politicized itself by creating rights rather than construing them.

·    The secularists have successfully banished Christians from law, politics, and government, and they won’t want to let them back in. While it is “politically incorrect” to attack the most reprehensible, immoral conduct, and while it is “politically incorrect” to wish not to pay for obscene art, Christians are fair game.

I urge you to reject Richard Honaker’s nomination in favor of a more moderate nominee with a less troubling record on issues of fundamental importance to all Americans.

Sincerely,

Nan Aron
President

In an expected and incredibly disappointing vote, the Senate today confirmed Southwick to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. From the Associated Press:

The Senate on Wednesday confirmed Judge Leslie Southwick to the federal appeals court serving Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas despite some Democrats’ complaints that decisions he supported were racially insensitive and inappropriate for a region still shadowed by civil rights struggles.

The 59-38 vote on confirmation was sealed after the nomination survived its main obstacle, a test tally moments earlier. Majority Democrats pressured by labor unions and other constituencies did not have the votes to filibuster, or block, Southwick’s confirmation.

The Congressional Black Caucus warned that there would be consequences for Democrats at the ballot box.

…

Urged by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the AFL-CIO and the Congressional Black Caucus, some Senate Democrats who opposed the nomination made their case nonetheless. They said they didn’t believe he is a bigot, but that the 5th Circuit could not afford a judge who has less than an “exemplary” record on civil rights.

“When it comes to the area of race and racism, we have to bend over backwards,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“I certainly don’t think he’s a racist,” Schumer added. “His words have to be seen in context. Like it or not when he’s nominated to the Fifth Circuit he’s carrying 200 and some odd years…on his back. That is the issue here.”

At issue were two cases he was involved in as a state appeals court judge in Mississippi. One was a 1998 decision that upheld the reinstatement of a social worker who used a racial slur in reference to a co-worker. Three years later, Southwick joined a ruling against a bisexual mother in a custody case. He also joined what some activists said was an anti-gay concurring opinion.

Southwick’s supporters pointed out that those were among 7,000 opinions across the nominee’s career and that none of those facts addressed his qualifications. Conservative legal groups began pressuring Democrats from traditionally Republican states to at least give Southwick an up-or-down vote.

Still, his nomination languished until one Democrat, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, joined with Judiciary Committee Republicans to move the question to the full Senate.

UPDATE: Senator Boxer, while opposed to the Southwick nomination, was not present for the cloture and confirmation votes on the floor of Senate.

At least one of California’s Senators is doing the right thing and voting against Southwick’s confirmation. Thank you, Senator Boxer!

The Fifth Circuit serves one of the most racially diverse regions in the country, and frequently hears critical civil rights cases. It is especially important, therefore, that a nominee to this court possess an unshakable commitment to equal justice and a willingness to protect the rights of groups such as minorities, workers, and consumers.

Unfortunately, President Bush has chosen a nominee who favors business interests over the interests of ordinary Americans and displays little regard for issues faced by minority communities. As a Mississippi state court judge, Mr. Southwick upheld a ruling that reinstated a state employee who used a racial slur, and in another case, found the sexual orientation of a mother to be a deciding factor in denying her custody of her child.

I am deeply disappointed that President Bush has once again attempted to fill the Fifth Circuit vacancy with a nominee holding views far to the right of most Americans.

Mr. Southwick’s nomination was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee on August 2, 2007 and will soon be considered by the entire Senate. Be assured that I will only support nominees who will safeguard the rights and freedoms of all Americans, and I do not support Mr. Southwick’s nomination.

The Hill is reporting that Sen. Feinstein “would vote for cloture and for the nomination on the floor.” Alliance for Justice also told us that Feinstein was on the floor speaking in favor of Southwick’s confirmation.

A vote to end debate on Southwick’s nomination to the Fifth Circuit is scheduled for tomorrow, Wednesday, at 11 a.m EDT.  If that vote succeeds, the full Senate will vote on his confirmation.

Every vote is being mustered, even while we’re apparently losing votes from moderate and Red State Democrats who plan to vote for the judge. The Boston Globe reports that Senators McCain and Obama are cutting show campaign trips to be on the floor tomorrow.

Meanwhile, Demetrius Shelton of the National Bar Association informs us that the California Association of Black Lawyers and the Black Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles have both now gone on record opposing Southwick’s nomination. We thank them and welcome their opposition to the nominee.

Special thanks to Kimberlei Evans, president of the Charles Houston Bar Association, for securing CHBA’s opposition to Southwick. CHBA is an affiliate of the National Bar Association.

We also want to thank National Bar Association vice president Demetrius Shelton for working the emails and phones, getting NBA members and affiliates to call in opposition to Southwick:

The National Bar Association needs our help in encouraging Senator Feinstein to vote no on the nomination of Judge Leslie Southwick to the US Court of Appeal for the Fifth Circuit.  We have received word that the nomination may be voted on as soon as tomorrow.  Please contact Senator Feinstein’s office and let your voice be heard on this very important issue. In short, Judge Southwick’s record while serving as a Mississippi state appeals court judge is replete with evidence that he is hostile to African-Americans and disadvantaged people including a  decision upholding the reinstatement of a social worker who used a racial epithet (the “n-word”) to describe a colleague.   Please see e-mail below from our friends at the Equal Justice Society summarizing the issue more fully.

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 10-9 nearly along party lines Aug. 2 to approve the nomination. To our surprise, California Democrat Dianne Feinstein joined all nine committee Republicans in voting for the nomination.  We ask that upon receipt of this e-mail that you contact Senator Feinstein’s office and urge her to vote no tomorrow when this matter comes before the full Senate!