And You Thought It Couldn’t Get Worst

It is going to be bad for a very long time, more anti-LGBT judges have been passed to the Senate for approval…

Senate Judiciary Committee pushes through several anti-LGBTQ judges in “monster markup”
LGBTQ advocates criticize Judiciary Committee for ramming through dozens of "objectionable" nominees
Metroweekly
By John Riley
February 11, 2019

The Senate Judiciary Committee has pushed through the nominations of William Barr to be Attorney General and several federal judges with troubling records on LGBTQ rights, setting them up for confirmation votes this week.

From the perspective of LGBTQ advocates, the list of approved nominees reads like a “Who’s Who” of activists whose past records or stances on various issues indicate a degree of animus that could influence their decision making on issues that are important to members of the LGBTQ community and people living with HIV.

For starters, several equality advocates have balked at the nomination of William Barr as the nation’s next attorney general. Barr, an attorney with the legal firm Kirkland & Ellis, who previously served as U.S. Attorney General under from 1991 to 1993, has amassed a long record of positions over his legal career that LGBTQ advocates find troubling.
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“For me [Sasha Buchert, a staff attorney with Lambda Legal], the thing that gets lost sometimes is that William Barr, particularly in Trump’s administration, will likely not last longer than a few months — at the most 2 years, whereas these judicial nominees have lifetime appointments,” Buchert says. “They’re going to be there 20, 30, even 40 years from now in some cases. They could be on the bench for a long time, issuing rulings from the bench that could hamper some of that progressive legislation we’ve been waiting for, such as the Equality Act — even when a pro-equality majority [eventually] takes back the Senate and the executive branch.”

That is what I am afraid of; these judges are appointed for life and for us it is a life sentence.

The Republicans have appointed a small fraction of the federal judges, there are over 3 thousand judges and they have appointed only around 200 judges but it is not so much the number of judges but where.

Specifically, Buchert points to Chad Readler, a nominee to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, who has argued against workplace protections for LGBTQ employees, and previously argued that protections against sex discrimination should not apply to cases where people are fired or mistreated in the workplace because of their sexual orientation. Readler also defied a court order requiring the Trump-Pence administration to disclose the names of the so-called “experts” with whom the Trump administration consulted when it was developing its ban on transgender service members.

Other problematic nominees, in the view of LGBTQ activists, include Eric Murphy, also a nominee to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, who has argued against allowing transgender students to use facilities matching their gender identity, and, as counsel of record in the Obergefell v. Hodges case, in favor of upholding Ohio and Michigan’s bans on same-sex marriage, and Allison Jones Rushing, a nominee to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, who has ties to the anti-LGBTQ Alliance Defending Freedom and has written in support of “religious freedom” measures and criticized courts for giving too much deference to “anti-religious” people with “eggshell sensitivities” who seek to challenge government acknowledgments of religion.

During the Obama administration the Republican in a dereliction and corruption of their Constitutional duties refused to hold any hearings on Obama’s appointees including his nominee now the Republicans are flooding the court system with anti-women rights and anti-LGBTQ judges.
In the past the states always had a say in judicial appointments but the 200 years history of states be given a say of judges has been thrown out by the Republicans.

That said, Zwarensteyn is highly critical of Republicans, especially Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, for ignoring the “blue-slip” process, an informal Senate tradition under which the committee would normally not consider a nominee unless their home state senator submitted a blue slip indicating they approved of the nomination moving forward.

On Thursday, senators on the Judiciary Committee debated the blue-slip process publicly during the an executive hearing, with Republicans taking the view that a blue slip was never intended to serve as a veto over a president’s decision to nominate whomever they wished to an open judicial position. Meanwhile, Democrats argued that respecting the blue-slip process was a way to seek input from home state senators, taking into account any concerns they might have, and ensuring that those who are successfully confirmed are not radically outside of the mainstream when it comes to judicial ideology.

“I think, overall, we have to start with the premise that this administration, and this Senate majority, are doing everything they can to rig the system so that they can pack as many anti-civil rights judges or people who have demonstrated hostility to the LGBTQ community onto the courts to transform the courts, and our country, for years to come,” Zwarensteyn says.

In the past appointees were judges with experience on the bench or seasoned lawyers but some of the current nominees have no legal experience and the American Bar Association have found them unacceptable but that didn’t stop them from being appointed.

The Republicans have weaponized the judicial branch.