Senate confirms Loretta Lynch as next Attorney General
Nomination was delayed for five months as Republicans kept objecting to various policy stances
The U.S. Senate on Thursday confirmed Loretta Lynch, the former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, to become the nation’s first African-American woman to serve as Attorney General and only the second African-American overall, following in the footsteps of her predecessor, Eric Holder.
The vote, which was 56-43, follows nearly five months of delay since Lynch was nominated by President Obama and 56 days since her nomination was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Feb. 26. Senate Republicans claimed to be stalling Lynch’s nomination for a myriad of reasons, among them questions about Lynch’s independence from the White House, objections to Obama’s immigration policies, and a dispute over whether money in a fund for sex-trafficking victims would be prohibited from being used to finance abortions under the Hyde Amendment, even though it was not funded by taxpayer money.
At her confirmation hearings, Lynch was also grilled on the issue of same-sex marriage and polygamy, as Metro Weekly previously reported. Republican senators peppered Lynch with hypothetical questions while also second-guessing the decision by Holder not to defend the congressionally passed Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) when it went before the Supreme Court, which ultimately struck down prohibitions on recognizing legal same-sex marriages in June 2013. Lynch told members of the committee that it would be unusual for the Justice Department to deem a law passed by Congress as unconstitutional on its face.
“It’s my view that when it comes to the position of the attorney general and the role of the Department of Justice in defending the statutes as passed by this Congress, the issue is not my personal views or any issue of bias or policy even, but it is the duty and responsibility of the Department of Justice to defend those statutes,” Lynch said at the time. Although she also indicated there may be “rare instances” where legal analysis raises constitutional issues, she also said she anticipated that those would be “few and far between.”
All 44 Senate Democrats, both independents and 10 Republicans voted to confirm Lynch. Those Republicans voting in the affirmative were: Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), Thad Cochran (R-Midd.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio). Ayotte, Johnson, Kirk and Portman are all up for re-election in Democratic-leaning or swing states in 2016.
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