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Volume 5 Number 1
SENATE COMMITTEES REJECT ADMINISTRATION NOMINEES
On June 5, the Senate Judiciary Committee by a vote of 10-8 refused to approve a motion to report favorably Jefferson B. Sessions' nomination to U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama. The Committee also failed to approve a motion to report the nomination without recommendation by a 9-9 vote, killing the nomination in Committee.
Civil rights groups had strongly opposed the nomination because of Sessions lack of racial sensitivity. Several witnesses at hearings before the Committee testified that:
Sessions described the National Council of Churches, the NAACP, the ACLU, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference as "un-American" organizations teaching "anti-American" values.
Sessions described a prominent white civil rights attorney in Mobile as a "disgrace to his race."
Sessions stated, with regard to the Ku Klux Klan, that he thought its members were OK until he heard that they used drugs.
Following a disagreement between a black and white member of his staff, Sessions admonished the black to be "careful what he said to white folks."
Sessions referred to a black lawyer in the office of the U.S. Attorney as "boy."
Further, as U.S. Attorney, Sessions prosecuted for voter fraud several prominent black civil rights activists, including Albert Turner, one of the leaders of the original march to Selma. The trial judge dismissed most of the counts for lack of evidence, and the jury acquitted the defendants on all the remaining counts. Attorneys for Turner and other civil rights workers raised questions about misconduct by Sessions' office in the handling of the case; they complained in particular that Sessions had refused to investigate evidence of voting fraud by whites.
Senator Howell Heflin, a conservative Democrat from Alabama, was credited with casting the decisive vote. The Senator stated:. "This is not an easy vote for me, and it will be one that many will disagree with, particularly in my home state... but as long as I have reasonable doubts, my conscience is not clear and I must vote no." Senator Heflin continued:
I regret that I cannot vote for confirmation, but ray duty to uphold the Constitution and my duty to the justice system is greater than any duty to any individual (Philadelphia Inquirer, June 7, 1986).
Ralph G. Neas, Executive Director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights characterized Heflin's vote as "key, courageous and decisive." Senator Joseph Biden (D-DEL), ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said the bipartisan vote demonstrated that "on issues of race, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee is not prepared 'to compromise." Althea Simmons, Director of the Washington Bureau of the NAACP, stated: "We are quite elated. We felt all along that the Senate could not in good conscience place Mr. Sessions on the bench for a lifetime" (Los Angeles Times, June 6, 1936).
In similar action, on I-lay 20, 1986 the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee by a vote of 10-5 rejected the nomination of Jeffrey Zuckerman, Chief of Staff for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, to be general counsel of the Commission. Civil rights groups had strongly opposed Zuckerman's nomination asserting that his "strong and open opposition to accepted fair employment principles disqualifies him from serving in the critically important enforcement position of general counsel."
  
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