William Pryor Nomination Fact Sheet
June 27, 2003
William Pryor is an ultra-conservative legal activist whose record disqualifies him from a lifetime appointment to the federal judiciary. As Alabama Attorney General, Pryor has demonstrated a commitment to rolling back the clock on federal protections against discrimination based on race, gender, age, and disability.
Mr. Pryor's record raises numerous serious concerns, including:
- Mr. Pryor has sought to limit federal legislation that protects our civil and constitutional rights as an architect of the "state's rights" movement. For example, in United States v. Morrison, Pryor represented the only state to challenge the constitutionality of the federal remedy for victims of sexual assault and violence in the Violence Against Women Act.
- Mr. Pryor has urged restrictions on federal authority with respect to individual and other rights that were much more severe than the Supreme Court's final rulings. In Kimel v. Florida Board of Regents, Mr. Pryor suggested that Congress had no power to legislate under the Fourteenth Amendment with respect to age discrimination because it was not concerned with a "suspect" classification like race or national origin. In Alexander v. Sandoval, Mr. Pryor went a step even further than argue there is no private right of action to enforce Title VI regulations that prohibit actions with a discriminatory impact; he suggested that implying such a right would violate state sovereignty.
- Mr. Pryor urged Congress to consider eliminating a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. Mr. Pryor urged a congressional committee to repeal Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which protects the right to vote for racial minorities, labeling it "an affront to federalism and an expensive burden that has far outlived its usefulness."
- Mr. Pryor criticized the Supreme Court's decision in United States v. Virginia, in which it held unconstitutional the denial of admission to women by the Virginia Military Institute, a public university. Mr. Pryor disparaged the constitutional rights of women at stake by citing the decision as an example of the Court's having been "both antidemocratic and insensitive to federalism."
- Mr. Pryor has been a vocal opponent of the rights of criminal defendants, even to the point of supporting what is declared to be cruel and unusual punishment. In Hope v. Pelzer, Mr. Pryor defended Alabama's practice of handcuffing prison inmates to outdoor hitching posts without access to water if they refused to work on chain gangs or otherwise disrupted them, arguing that the practice did not violate the prisoner's right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment.
- Mr. Pryor has demonstrated hostility to the rights of gays and lesbians. Mr. Pryor filed an anti-gay amicus brief in Lawrence v. Texas urging the Supreme Court to uphold Texas' law banning same-sex sodomy, arguing that a "constitutional right that protects 'whether and how to connect sexually' must logically extend to activities like prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia."
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.
