Priscilla Owen Nomination Fact Sheet
March 1, 2003
A review of Justice Owen's record to date raises serious questions about her commitment to equal justice and civil rights for all Americans. Justice Owen's consistently conservative legal opinions reflect a judicial activism that falls outside the mainstream of judicial thought and seriously risk the continued vigorous enforcement of critical constitutional and statutory rights in the areas of civil rights and civil liberties.
Justice Owen's record raises numerous serious concerns, including:
- Justice Owen's judicial activism and staunchly conservative positions on civil rights all but preclude her ability to be a fair and impartial circuit court judge. Justice Owen is considered to be among the most conservative justices on the Texas Supreme Court, itself very conservative; she is also the second most frequent dissenter currently serving on the court. Priscilla Owen has demonstrated that she is a conservative judicial activist with a willingness to rewrite the law whole cloth in order to achieve a particular result.
- Justice Owen's past opinions dealing with civil rights attempted to significantly narrow if not completely alter existing legislation. For example, in Quantum Chemical Corp. v. Toennies, she held -counter to Texas anti-discrimination law-that discrimination must be the sole reason, instead of simply a motivating factor for hiring or firing, in cases where it is alleged that other reasons advanced by the employer are pretexts for discrimination.
- Historically, Justice Owen has favored protection of businesses over the rights of consumers and workers. For example, in a series of rulings, Justice Owen wrote or joined opinions that severely limited the ability of workers to recover for on-the-job injuries. These include Texas Workers Compensation Commission v. Garcia, where she upheld a law that restricted the right to jury trial for certain aspects of work-related claims brought by injured workers; Lawrence v. CDB Services, Inc., where she upheld the right of employers to seek from their employees, in exchange for certain medical and death benefits, waivers of their right to sue for workplace injuries; and Sonnier v. Chisholm-Ryder, where she issued a dissent that interpreted statutory law in a way which would have broadly protected manufacturers from liability for injuries caused by equipment they manufactured.
- Justice Owen has exhibited judicial activism by attempting to rewrite settled law to create barriers not contained in the statutory language. In cases involving reproductive choice, Justice Owen's attempts to legislate from the bench has been so obvious that in one instance, In re Doe, the effort of Owen and other dissenters was criticized by a fellow Justice (now White House Counsel), Alberto Gonzales as "an unconscionable act of judicial activism."
- The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit is widely regarded as one of the two most conservative federal circuit courts in the nation. The Fifth Circuit has the largest percentage of African-Americans and Hispanics of any federal circuit court in the country. It has also issued many of the most extreme anti-civil rights rulings in the country-including an employment discrimination case, Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing Products, Inc., which contained an opinion on the "intent" standard that was so extreme it was unanimously overturned by the Supreme Court. It is critical that any new appointee to the Fifth Circuit be a jurist who will have a moderating influence on the court and who will respect the rule of law and judicial precedent.
For many Americans, the federal judiciary is the first line of defense against violations of dearly held constitutional principles. Because of the impact that lifetime appointments of judges hostile to civil rights may have on the rights of millions of Americans, LCCR/LCCREF will continue to monitor the integrity of the processes for nominating and confirming judicial appointments.
