Senate Republicans just rubber-stamped another extreme, Federalist Society-approved judicial nominee to the federal appellate bench: 39-year-old Andrew Oldham
In his confirmation hearing, Mr. Oldham refused to say that the landmark #SCOTUS case Brown v. Board of Education was correctly decided. He also refused to say whether he agreed that voter discrimination still exists in the United States.
He has also called the Supreme Court “the most dangerous branch” and told the Federalist Society that there are “particular things that I think are illegitimate in the way that we conduct modern American law.”
Mr. Oldham’s views are outside the judicial mainstream and show an extreme ideological agenda. That’s clear from his writings and own words.
Now Republicans are looking to rubber-stamp Ryan Bounds to be a federal circuit judge sitting in Oregon. Bounds has received zero blue slips; his nomination is strongly opposed by both of Oregon’s senators.
By ignoring the objections of home state senators, Republicans are diminishing the voice that home-state constituents have, through their senators, in the process of selecting judges in their states. This precedent could affect every state.
Mr. Bounds has written and published articles that should disqualify him from consideration for a federal judgeship. Consider how a county bar association that Mr. Bounds has belonged to for 12 years described his articles after they were revealed.
The Multnomah Bar Association said Bounds’ writings “express insensitive, intolerant, and disdaining views toward racial and ethnic minorities, campus sexual assault victims, and the LGBTQ community.” mbabar.org/Resources/News…
The statement went on to say that the association “strongly disavows the views expressed in those articles as racist, misogynistic, homophobic and disparaging of survivors of sexual assault and abuse.”
Not only did Mr. Bounds publish these writings, but he chose not to share his writings with Oregon’s judicial selection committee - even though the committee had asked him to disclose any potentially controversial materials.
This is not a close call. The Senate should not move forward with Mr. Bounds’ nomination. It is hard to believe Senate Republicans would abandon the century-old blue slip tradition for the sake of this nominee.
My Republican colleagues are simply rubber-stamping President Trump’s nominees for life despite so many of them being extreme. The fact that they moved forward this week with these two nominations is a troubling sign for how they'll handle the Supreme Court vacancy.
