LCCR Opposes Roberts
Feature Story by civilrights.org staff - 9/15/2005
Citing John Roberts' lack of commitment to fundamental rights and freedoms, the nation's premier civil and human rights coalition announced its opposition to Roberts' confirmation to the position of chief justice of the United States.In testimony Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), said that in four days of hearings, Roberts had "failed to distance himself from the anti-civil rights positions he has advocated" and therefore LCCR was compelled to oppose his confirmation.
Henderson said that Roberts' vision for America did not match that of mainstream Americans.
"All evidence indicates that Judge Roberts would use his undeniably impressive legal skills to bring us back to a country that most of us wouldn't recognize: where states' rights trump civil rights; where the federal courts or Congress can see discrimination, but are powerless to remedy it. This is not the America in which most Americans want to live," Henderson stated.
A Roberts confirmation would signal a federal retreat in the area of civil rights, according to LCCR's Henderson, giving examples of Roberts' stated views about voting rights, school desegregation, and sex discrimination issues.
In the area of voting rights, Roberts wrote that federal courts should not be empowered to invalidate "widely accepted state practices," even if such practices prevent African Americans and others from having equal opportunity in voting. Henderson said that "if his view had prevailed, our country's voting rights revolution would never have happened."
Henderson also stated, "In John Roberts' view, Congress could exclude all school desegregation cases from the jurisdiction of the federal courts."
Noting that Roberts had advised against intervention in a sex discrimination case against the Kentucky prison system, contending that discriminatory treatment of men and women in the prison's vocational program was "reasonable" in light of "tight prison budgets," Henderson asked, "Would Judge Roberts then apply the same argument to equal educational opportunities for women generally?"
"We have heard nothing demonstrating [Roberts'] commitment to ensuring that the federal government will continue to play a strong role in protecting the civil and human rights of all Americans, " LCCR's Henderson said.
