Female judicial nominees to test Democrats’ double standard

Senate Republicans next week will force showdowns on four of President Trump’s appeals court picks, party leaders announced Thursday, including votes on three female nominees who Republicans said will test whether Democrats are guilty of a double standard on gender.

First up is Amy Barrett, a Notre Dame University professor whom Democrats have questioned over her “orthodox” Catholic beliefs.

Also on the list: Justices Joan Larsen and Allison Eid, who serve on the Michigan and Colorado supreme courts, respectively, amassing what Republicans said were distinguished legal careers deserving of promotions.

Each nominee cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee this month on a party-line vote, with no approval from Democrats. Chairman Chuck Grassley, Iowa Republican, noted that Democrats had complained about Senate Republicans voting against President Obama’s female nominees.

“I don’t want to see a double standard on qualified female nominees from different presidents,” Mr. Grassley said Thursday, as his committee cleared Justice Eid in a party-line vote.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, warned Democrats against opposing Ms. Barrett, suggesting that their opposition was related to her Catholic faith.

“I would remind colleagues that we do not have religious tests for office in this country,” he said.

Republicans have confirmed seven judicial nominees for Mr. Trump so far — including U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, whose former seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit would be filled by Justice Eid.

That puts them well ahead of Mr. Obama, who had filled two vacancies by this point in his first term.

Still, Mr. McConnell is under pressure from conservatives to deliver more judges, and the string of votes next week is a major down payment.

The week will begin with a vote on a pick to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, proceed to the three women and finish with a vote on Stephanos Bibas, another appeals court nominee.

Mr. McConnell had to set up votes to head off filibusters on each of the nominees after Democrats insisted on forcing them to go through all the procedural hurdles.

“This pointless obstruction is designed simply to waste time, not change an outcome — and it won’t,” Mr. McConnell said.

The Senate confirmed its seventh judge this year on Thursday, voting 79-16 to give Scott Palk a seat on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma.

Mr. Grassley’s committee, meanwhile, cleared the path for Justice Eid and Mr. Bibas, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Both were approved on 11-9 party-line votes.

Two U.S. District Court judges also received a party-line vote on Thursday, while four others were approved by unanimous votes.

Democrats said Justice Eid is too conservative to claim Justice Gorsuch’s old seat and that they worry about the direction of some of her rulings on workers’ rights and criminal justice.

“As Justice Gorsuch’s replacement on the 10th Circuit, her record suggests she would echo his conservative approach to the law,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

As for Ms. Barrett, Democrats insisted they weren’t objecting to her religion but her experience. Ms. Barrett had worked on only one trial before becoming a professor at Notre Dame.

One Democrat also tried to tie Ms. Barrett to what he called a “hate group,” saying her decision to speak at an event sponsored by the religious liberty law firm Alliance Defending Freedom makes her unfit to sit on a federal appeals court.

More broadly, liberal advocacy groups complained that Senate Republicans were moving to briskly on judges.

“Mitch McConnell’s actions today to jam through four controversial appellate court nominees is dangerous and belittles the Senate’s role in analyzing the records of these powerful lifetime appointments,” said Vanita Gupta, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a former high-ranking official in the Obama Justice Department.

Ms. Gupta called the four appeals court nominees — including the three women — “well outside of the mainstream” and urged the Senate to try to derail them.

Dan Goldberg, legal director of the progressive Alliance for Justice, said Mr. Grassley’s suggestion that Democrats are using a double standard to deny women confirmation is misleading.

“It’s quite a rich suggestion when only 11 of the president’s judicial nominees — 11 out of 57 judicial nominees, less than 20 percent — have been female, way, way significantly lower than the percent of females President Obama nominated,” Mr. Goldberg said.

Mr. Goldberg also said the rush to confirm the judges next week, after two of the circuit judges were cleared by the committee Thursday morning, doesn’t give senators much time to scrutinize their lengthy records.

“What you are seeing is President Trump and the Republicans trying to accomplish through stacking the courts with extreme nominees what they can’t accomplish in Congress,” he said.

But Carrie Severino, chief counsel for the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, said Senate Republicans deserved praise for pressing the nominations over Democrats’ objections.

“They are delivering on the promise to restore the rule of law to our courts, and conservatives should give them all the credit they deserve,” she said. “We look forward to even more confirmations down the line.”

Ms. Severino made the comments after news reports suggested her organization was planning to run ads pressuring Mr. McConnell to change the Senate rules in order to swiftly confirm the president’s judges despite Democratic opposition.

Mr. McConnell said the new judges marked a change in philosophy from the Obama era, when he said the president’s goal for judicial nominees was “the ability to empathize with certain groups over others.”

“That’s a great standard if you’re the party in the case whom the judge has empathy for. It’s not so great if you’re the other person,” Mr. McConnell said. “It also was not in keeping with the long-standing American legal traditions of applying the law equally to all, giving every litigant a fair shake, and ruling based on the actual meaning of our Constitution and laws — not what a judge or some preferred political constituency might wish they meant.”