Judicial Appointments

JUDICIAL APPOINTMENTS -- (House of Representatives - May 18, 2005)

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton) is recognized for 5 minutes.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, the Congressional Black Caucus has been in the forefront of the fight to preserve the filibuster, a much-used, indeed used more against African Americans than any others. We do not want to see and will not stand to see the rules changed when it could now be used to protect us from judges who would overturn our rights.

We have supported the idea of a compromise, if one could be found; but I come to the floor this evening to say that we are horrified to hear of a possible compromise involving two judges that would be most unacceptable to the 43 members of the Congressional Black Caucus who unanimously oppose elimination of the filibuster and unanimously oppose these two judges: Attorney General William Pryor, who would be nominated to the 11th Circuit; and Janice Rogers Brown, who would be nominated to the D.C. Court of Appeals.

Briefly, Attorney General Pryor in this year when we are starting the reauthorization of the 1965 Voting Rights Act would simply be totally unacceptable to us and we think to most Americans. This is a man who sought to repeal the critical section of the Voting Rights Act, who has indicated that some rights now protected by the Constitution should be regarded as social disputes and essentially has indicated that some of these rights now protected by the Constitution should indeed be left to the States. This is a man who belongs perhaps on the Supreme Court in the 19th century, not today.

We are particularly insulted that President Bush would resubmit the name of Janice Rogers Brown. Has he done so because she is African American and somehow he believes that for that reason people will go easy on her and not look at what in fact she has stood for? We regard her nomination as nothing short of insulting. When she was first nominated to the California Supreme Court, the signal from the California Association of Black Lawyers who opposed her nomination was that her appointment could be detrimental, as they put it, to black America with nothing short of, as they put it, far reaching circumstances for generations to come. How right they proved to be. When she was renominated to the California Supreme Court, 20 of the 23 members of the California bar found her to be not qualified because of the way she inserted her personal opinions, her personal views, into her judicial opinions.

Janice Rogers Brown and the rule of law are strangers. She has no regard for precedent. How else to explain a ruling of hers where she found that racially derogatory on-the-job speech was unconstitutional even though the Supreme Court long ago found that such speech is not protected by title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Why did she find herself in dissent reaching this conclusion?

I recite the cases because you hear that these judges are extreme. We mean to make you understand, hopefully, what we mean by extreme. Proposition 209 passed, an anti-affirmative action proposition, passed in California. The judge who was on her side of the case, the Chief Justice, Ronald George, also appointed by Governor Pete Wilson, said when he read her concurrence, remember, concurrence with him, that the concurrence raised ``a serious distortion of history,'' indicating that it would be widely and correctly viewed as presenting an unfair and inaccurate caricature of affirmative action programs. When a judge on your side appointed by the same Governor as you characterizes your agreement with him in this way, is he not telling the Senate something it must listen to?

Here is a woman who found that black women in a case involving a prosecution where the prosecution may have used racial preemptory challenges found that black women are not a cognizable group. Again, she has often found herself in dissent even from her own Republican colleagues.

We do not need this woman on the District of Columbia Court of Appeals where she would bring her views that ``the New Deal was the triumph of our own socialist revolution'' to Washington.

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