May 16, 2019 - Issue: Vol. 165, No. 82 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 1st Session
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Nominations (Executive Session); Congressional Record Vol. 165, No. 82
(Senate - May 16, 2019)
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[Pages S2896-S2897] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] Nominations Mr. CASEY. Madam President, I come to the floor again this morning to discuss several judicial nominations considered by the Senate this week. Earlier this week, the Senate voted to confirm Michael Truncale to the Eastern District of Texas and Kenneth Lee to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals seat in California, and today we will be voting on the nomination of Wendy Vitter to the Eastern District of Louisiana. The Senate is considering and confirming nominees whose records indicate they are far outside the mainstream. I have worked very hard over a number of years now--I guess we are in our eighth year--working with Senator Toomey, to fill district court vacancies in Pennsylvania with well-qualified and experienced judges whom I believe will be able to set aside their ideologies or personal beliefs and apply the law to the cases before them. But I do not have the same confidence in many of the nominees before this body today and especially the nominees we are considering. I will go in the order that I mentioned before--first, Michael Truncale, then Kenneth Lee, and Wendy Vitter. I believe that in all three cases, all are not mainstream conservatives. Their backgrounds and records are very political, and they have long records of advocating for certain positions on issues that may come before them as either a U.S. district court judge or an appellate judge. First of all, Mr. Truncale has advocated strongly for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, which provided healthcare coverage and critical patient protections for 20 million people [[Page S2897]] in terms of coverage and tens of millions more in terms of protection. He said that the Affordable Care Act would ``lead to the rationing of healthcare.'' He has personally advocated for abolishing the Department of Education, and he used false, unfounded claims of voter fraud to support voter ID laws that disproportionately affect low-income voters and communities of color. Second, Kenneth Lee was confirmed over the objections of both California Senators, Senator Harris and Senator Feinstein--Senator Feinstein, in this case, being the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, the very committee that considers judges. Mr. Lee has a litany of writings that include offensive statements about immigrants, people of color, and LGBT Americans. He has strongly opposed affirmative action policies that help make our institutions of higher learning more diverse, and it is very possible that he may consider matters relating to these policies as a member of the Ninth Circuit. Finally, Wendy Vitter has virtually no Federal trial court experience, has a long record of opposing contraception, and has promoted false information about the safety of oral contraceptives. These views are not only outside of the mainstream--the judicial or legal mainstream--but they are also not supported by science. I don't believe these nominees will be able to set aside their personal views and apply relevant precedent, and my concern is compounded by recent efforts by conservative jurists to overturn longstanding precedents. Most Americans thought that the Voting Rights Act, which for decades protected the franchise for Americans of color, particularly Black Americans, was a foundational, almost untouchable statute. But in 2013, the conservative majority of the Supreme Court, which has gotten only more conservative, moved to the right even more. That Court, the Supreme Court, gutted the protections of the Voting Rights Act in the Shelby County v. Holder case. Just last year, in the Janus decision, the Supreme Court overturned a four-decades-old precedent in the Abood case that allowed public sector unions to collect nonpolitical, so-called fair share fees to cover the costs of negotiations that benefit all workers. So you have the union doing the work, and the law allowed them, for four decades, to charge other employees who benefit from the work of the union, and the Supreme Court struck that down. Pennsylvania passed a similar law in the 1980s, which has been the law of the land in Pennsylvania for years. It was signed into law in the late 1980s by my father when he was serving as Governor, so that is an important issue in Pennsylvania for working men and women. The conservative majority of the Supreme Court overturned the Abood case, eviscerating a precedent that was relied upon by public sector unions and their governmental employers all over the country. I believe the next step by the far right and by this court and maybe by the Supreme Court and maybe in another court would be to make illegal the very right to organize for wages and benefits. I hope I am wrong about that, but I believe that is the logical next step for the right. Just this week, a conservative majority of the Supreme Court overturned a 40-year precedent regarding States' sovereign immunity in the courts of other States. In the last line of his dissent, Justice Breyer sounded alarm bells about this kind of judicial activism from the right, saying: ``Today's decision can only cause one to wonder which cases the court will overrule next.'' He is right. We no longer know what is civil law and what could be up for debate. We thought that Abood was settled law in the context of labor unions and the right to organize or an issue related to the right to organize. We thought the Voting Rights Act was settled law. This week we mark the 65th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, a unanimous Supreme Court decision holding that segregation in our public school system, in addition to being a profound moral failure, was a violation of our Constitution. I would hope--we all would hope that Brown v. Board of Education would remain rock solid settled law. Yet, because of what we have seen in the last couple of years with this Court, we must stay vigilant. We cannot let civil rights that Americans fought for and earned and have cherished for decades be chipped away by extreme judicial nominees who hold insuperable political and policy preferences. I oppose the nominees that the Senate has considered this week, and I will continue to oppose extreme nominees to our Federal courts. I yield the floor to the distinguished Democratic leader.
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