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Press Release Just In from AdaWatch:
The National Coalition for Disability Rights (NCDR) is an alliance of more than 500 national, state, and local disability organizations joined to protect and strengthen the civil rights of people with disabilities. NCDR's ADA Watch has united hundreds of organizations and thousands of individuals in opposition to the confirmation of Jeffrey Sutton to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals and has organized opposition events in Washington, DC and in Columbus, Ohio.
NCDR's president, Jim Ward explains: "Sutton's career has been highlighted by aggressive -- and often successful -- efforts to dismantle federal disability rights and civil rights protections. He has actively worked to weaken Federal protections for people with disabilities, minorities, seniors, women victims of violence, Medicaid recipients and others. Sutton -- like too many of the Bush judicial nominees -- has targeted the New Deal, the Great Society, Medicaid, the ADA, Olmstead, and the authority of a democratically elected Congress to legislate remedies when petitioned by American citizens."
Thursday, January 30: Disability Rights supporters will attend the official Executive Session of the Senate Judiciary Committee at 9:30 AM in Dirksen Senate Office Building, Room 226. This will be followed by ADA Watch's "People's Hearing," in Dirksen 138 at 1:30 PM, to examine the impact of Mr. Sutton's activism on people with disabilities. Individuals from Sutton's home-state of Ohio will share their stories and illustrate the threats of Federalism to real people.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote tomorrow on Miguel Estrada, a nominee to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Mr. Estrada comes with a scant paper trail but a reputation for taking extreme positions on important legal questions. He stonewalled when he was asked at his confirmation hearings last fall to address concerns about his views. Given these concerns, and given the thinness of the record he and his sponsors in the administration have chosen to make available, the Senate should vote to reject his nomination."There's more, we recommend you read it--and fax your Senator today.
Left-leaning groups are opposing Bush's nomination of Carolyn Kuhl to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
"On Friday, a coalition of left-leaning groups met to urge public opposition to Kuhl....saying she was among President Bush's most conservative nominees. She was called anti-consumer, anti-labor, anti-abortion, anti-environment and more."
"Kuhl has been criticized for work she did while a Justice Department lawyer, including arguing for a return to nonprofit status for segregationist Bob Jones University and signing a brief that questioned Roe v. Wade. She was also criticized Friday as being against whistleblower laws and for having represented Shell Oil in a dispute for which Shell was ordered to pay $5 million to clean contaminated land."
"Judge Kuhl's record on women's health and Roe v. Wade are out of step with commonly held views and well-established legal principles," said Carole Joffe of the Center for Reproductive Health Research and Policy in San Francisco. "
"Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, prefaced the first meeting of this Congress' Senate Judiciary Committee by announcing a change in the handling of "blue slips," the traditional consent forms requested of a judicial nominee's home state senators. The move could give Kuhl a hearing even if Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., declines to return her blue slip, a signal of opposition."
The disabled community and civil rights groups are furious that President Bush has nominated to the federal bench a man who they say has worked to weaken federal protections for them. Hundreds of protesters plan a march on Washington followed by an e-mail and phone campaign against Columbus, Ohio lawyer Jeffrey Sutton, who has been named to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati."For more on why these groups oppose Sutton, see our prior posts here and here.
People For the American Way today joined the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund in opposing the confirmation of Miguel A. Estrada to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Senate Judiciary Committee Orrin Hatch has called for a vote on Estrada's nomination on Thursday, January 30.People For the American Way President Ralph G. Neas rejected suggestions
that Estrada's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on September 26, 2002 had
cleared the way for his confirmation."At his confirmation hearing, Mr. Estrada stubbornly refused to answer many
important questions from Senators concerning his jurisprudential views and
legal philosophy," said Neas. "There is too much at stake to give someone a
powerful a lifetime seat on the federal appeals court without understanding
how he will approach fundamental legal and constitutional questions."Neas said it was outrageous that on the same day Sen. Hatch announced that
"Sen. Hatch is intent on pushing through a nominee like Miguel Estrada, who
there would be a Judiciary Committee vote on Estrada's nomination next week,
he also announced that he would hold additional hearings on appellate court
nominees Charles Pickering and Priscilla Owen, who were rejected by the
Committee last year after in-depth public hearings - two of them in
Pickering's case.
revealed as little as possible about his approach to judging," said Neas.
"Yet at the same time, he plans to expend more of the Committee's time and
energy on nominees whose records were examined exhaustively at public
hearings and whose nominations were rejected."
The Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Orrin Hatch of Utah, has scheduled a hearing for Circuit Court of Appeals nominee Jeffrey Sutton for Wednesday, Jan. 29, at 9:30 a.m. Scores of disability rights groups and other organizations are actively opposing the Sutton nomination. The American Association for the Physically Disabled ( AAPD) encourages you to fax letters of opposition to the Senate Judiciary Committee at 202-228-0861. See their website for a sample letter to write.
We wrote about this last week here, when we received a similar action alert from the ADA Watch.
The Boston Globe reports that speculation on Rehnquist's retirement is growing.
Don't miss Pontificator on the necessity of the Democrats filibustering against all of Bush's right wing judicial nominees.
A coalition of more than 400 national, state, and local disability organizations is opposing Jeffrey Sutton, President Bush’s controversial pick to fill a lifetime seat on the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. As the Senate Majority leadership today announced Sutton’s hearing date of January 29th, opposition events in Washington and around the nation were also being scheduled.Advocates will leave Sutton’s home state of Ohio on January 29th and join disability rights supporters from around the nation in Washington on January 30th . The event at the U.S. Capitol is being coordinated by the National Coalition for Disability Rights as part of the organization’s ADA Watch program. Sutton is being opposed by hundreds of disability organizations because of a history of activism to roll back disability rights laws including the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), as well as federal protections regarding Age Discrimination, Violence Against Women, and the rights of Medicaid recipients. (See ADA Watchfor a list of organizations and more info.)
Jim Ward, NCDR’s president stated today: “As the nation celebrates the life and legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., whose words and actions have been a model for the disability rights movement, it is deeply troubling that the U.S. Senate will be considering a nominee – an attorney who has spent most of his career rolling back disability and civil rights protections – for a lifetime seat on the Federal Court.” Ward continued, “With strong ties to the Federalist Society and its extreme State’s Rights agenda, Sutton actively fought to weaken the rights of state employees to seek redress for discrimination under the ADA. He fought to strip Medicaid beneficiaries of their legal rights to sue for services. He even fought on the wrong side of the historic Olmstead decision, arguing that unnecessarily keeping people with disabilities in institutions was not a form of discrimination. The Senate must reject this activist nominee and the President should pick nominees whose records indicate a willingness to uphold Congress’ authority to invoke the ADA – the national mandate for the elimination of discrimination against people with disabilities.”
"President Bush will nominate the government's chief criminal prosecutor, Michael Chertoff, to a federal appeals court that handles cases for New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania and the Virgin Islands, a lawmaker says."
"Chertoff was the U.S. attorney for New Jersey and an attorney in private practice before Bush brought him to Washington as head of the Justice
Department's criminal division. The White House notified Sen. Jon Corzine, D-N.J., on Wednesday that Bush would nominate Chertoff to the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals. "
The secret life of Clarence Thomas, revealed for a hefty $1.5 million.
"This is the largest advance ever paid a sitting Supreme Court justice and that the agreement with this most conservative justice on the court coincidentally came from News Corp., the leviathan media empire owned by the conservative Rupert Murdoch."
Congressional Quarterly and C-Span are reporting today that Missouri Reps. Richard Gephardt and William Clay have written President Bush urging him to renominate Ronnie White of Missouri for a seat of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals. White, an African-American, was nominated by Clinton and rejected in a party-line vote in 1999, primarily because of then-Missouri Senator John Ashcroft's opposition. Ashcroft crusaded against White because of a few of his dissents in death penalty cases. You can read about Ashcroft's sabotaging of White's nomination here.
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