Civil Rights Community: 'No More Controversial Judges'
Feature Story from civilrights.org
Angela Okamura
March 14, 2008
Civil rights groups have been growing increasingly concerned with President Bush's nominees to federal courts and are urging the Senate to stop confirming these controversial judges.
"The Senate has failed to do its job, and because of this, the civil rights of Americans have suffered," said Wade Henderson, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR).
Judges Gene Pratter and Richard Honaker, nominated to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals and the Wyoming District Court, respectively, are the latest in a long line of controversial nominees by the Bush Administration.
Civil rights groups are concerned about Judge Pratter's seemingly dismissive and even hostile attitude to the rights of the disabled and victims of employment discrimination. They are similarly concerned about Judge Honaker, whose writings indicate that as a judge he would likely value his own moral and religious views over the precedents of our federal courts.
Civil rights groups point to two recent Supreme Court decisions as evidence of the effect judges nominated by Bush have had on civil rights - Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire Co. and the voluntary school integration cases in Seattle and Louisville, KY. The votes of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, both nominated by Bush in 2005, were critical in determining the outcome in these cases.
In Ledbetter, Lilly Ledbetter had brought a pay discrimination suit against the Goodyear Tire Co. after working for the company for almost 20 years as one of the few female managers, all the while receiving significantly less pay than her male counterparts.
In a 5-4 decision, the court ruled that a claim of pay discrimination must be made within 180 days of the employer's decision to pay an employee less than that employee's peers, and that this 180-day period does not renew at the issuance of every discriminatory check. The decision was a reversal of longstanding precedent and a major reinterpretation of a provision in the Civil Rights Act of 1965 that protects employees from employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.
In Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education, five justices voted to reaffirm that educational diversity remains a compelling governmental interest. Significantly however, Justices Roberts and Alito joined Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia in arguing that diversity was not a compelling interest.
At the same time, a majority of the court, including Justices Roberts and Alito, found that the voluntary integration plans in Louisville and Seattle – adopted by the school districts to prevent individual schools from being segregated – were not broader than necessary to achieve diversity and thus were unconstitutional.
In his opinion, Chief Justice Roberts argued that striking down the school integration plans was consistent with Brown v. Board of Education. In his dissenting opinion, Justice Breyer stated that the Court was actually undermining the landmark decision: "The last half-century has witnessed great strides toward racial equality, but we have not yet realized the promise of Brown. To invalidate the plans under review is to threaten the promise of Brown."
Alliance for Justice has recently released a short documentary, Supreme Injustices, on these cases and the implications of the right-leaning court. However, civil rights groups say that the effects of Justices Roberts and Alito on the Supreme Court are just the tip of the iceberg and that many of President Bush's other nominees, including recently confirmed Judge Leslie Southwick and pending nominees Pratter and Honaker, are also dangerous.
"The civil rights community continues to see a pattern of judicial nominees who are hostile towards or indifferent to the civil rights of Americans," said Henderson. "The Senate must stop aiding Bush in his attempt to stack the courts, of which the end result is the erosion of rights in the judicial system."
