Senate confirms more anti-LGBTQ judges, including one with ties to alleged “hate group”
Republicans continue to confirm judges who have expressed hostility towards LGBTQ rights
Over a three-day span, the U.S. Senate confirmed three Trump federal circuit court nominees who have come under scrutiny for their perceived anti-LGBTQ animus, including one who has ties to the conservative Family Research Council.
On Tuesday, the Senate confirmed Allison Jones Rushing to a seat on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on a party-line vote. The 37-year-old Rushing, a white collar lawyer and former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has previously stoked the ire of LGBTQ groups, who say her past comments criticizing the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize marriage equality, and her writings in support of religious exemptions from nondiscrimination laws, are problematic.
She has criticized the courts for giving too much deference to “anti-religious” people with “eggshell sensitivities” who seek to challenge government acknowledgments of religion, and has made other statements that have been interpreted as criticizing other LGBTQ-related court decisions, such as Romer v. Evans, and Lawrence v. Texas, the latter of which overturned sodomy laws that criminalized homosexual sex.
Rushing has also been criticized for her ties to Alliance Defending Freedom, a socially conservative organization that favors rolling back protections for LGBTQ people that has been labeled a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, where Rushing began her career as a legal intern. Throughout her career, Rushing has continued to stay close to the organization, even making several presentations to ADF audiences on various legal topics over the years.
“Throughout her brief legal career, Allison Rushing has supported and closely associated herself with one of the most extreme anti-LGBT organizations operating in this country today, the Alliance Defending Freedom,” Sharon McGowan, the legal director and chief strategy officer of Lambda Legal, said in a statement. “Rather than disqualifying her from consideration, this aspect of her record seems to have made up for all of the other deficiencies in her record, including her inexperience and he lack of any connection to the state in which she will sit.
“Despite her denunciation of the Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision in United States v. Windsor, and her commitment to ADF’s mission to re-criminalize homosexuality and sterilize the transgender community, all 53 Republican Senators voted to confirm her. Today is a very difficult and disappointing day for the roughly 1 million LGBT people who live in the states covered by the Fourth Circuit, and for all people who care about courts that can treat all people with dignity and fairness.”
Vanita Gupta, the president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, criticized Republicans for “rush[ing] to confirm an inexperienced ideologue to a lifetime appointment in North Carolina despite her never having practiced there.”
“Rushing has denounced marriage equality, opposed remedies for discriminatory lending practices, and rejected efforts to end housing discrimination against domestic and sexual violence survivors,” Gupta said. “Her record clearly shows she will not be a fair and independent judge — a reality with dire consequences for Fourth Circuit cases and the American people.”
On Wednesday, the Senate confirmed Chad Readler to a seat on the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, again, on a largely party-line vote. Readler has opposed marriage equality, argued against workplace protections for LGBTQ employees, and previously argued that protections against sex discrimination should not apply to cases where people are fired or mistreated in the workplace because of their sexual orientation.
Readler, whose background consists of working for white shoe law firms and serving as the Acting U.S. Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice’s Civil Divison, also raised red flags among LGBTQ advocates for defying a court order requiring the Trump-Pence administration to disclose the names of the so-called “experts” with whom the Trump administration consulted when it was developing its ban on transgender service members.
“Readler has served as Jeff Sessions’ right-hand man in the Trump administration’s effort to deny life-saving protections for 52 million people with pre-existing conditions, including people living with HIV,” Sasha Buchert, a senior attorney for Lambda Legal, said in a statement. “Readler has also led the Justice Department’s efforts to allow businesses to turn away LGBT customers and ban transgender service members from the military. … The American people deserve more than half-hearted statements from moderate Republicans who claim to support people with pre-existing conditions and the LGBT community.”
On Thursday, the Senate voted along party lines once more to confirm Eric Murphy, the former solicitor general of Ohio, to another seat on the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. Murphy has previously argued against allowing transgender students to use facilities matching their gender identity in schools. He also served as counsel record in the Obergefell v. Hodges case that legalized marriage equality, arguing that the 6th Circuit should uphold Ohio and Michigan’s bans on same-sex marriage. The 6th Circuit did uphold the bans, which were then overturned by the Supreme Court.
In a statement, Buchert called Murphy’s confirmation “another example of how little concern Senate Republicans have for the safety and security of the LGBT community, and their broader disdain for civil rights,” adding: “Our federal courts will be the worse off for generations to come.”
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