BY STATE SENATOR JAMES SANDERS, JR.
We all know the famous Supreme Court cases in American history. Most of us probably know them better than we know the laws passed by Congress. Dred Scott ruled that a black person was mere property with no rights to use the court. Plessy v Ferguson legalized segregation. Korematsu approved President Roosevelt’s civil rights-violating use of internment camps for Japanese Americans.
On the reverse, Roe v Wade secured a woman’s right to abortion. Brown v Board of Education began the desegregation of our schools. More recently, Obergefell v Hodges guaranteed the equal marriage rights of gay people.
Given the importance of such decisions, we keep an eye on Supreme Court nominees like Neil Gorsuch. But with all of these high profile cases, it’s easy to forget that, beneath the highest court, there are hundreds of district judges. The average person who wants the Federal government to help them enforce their civil rights, their right to vote, or their right to be free of discrimination, will never see Neil Gorsuch’s face. They will take their case to a district judge.
Since the Senate blocked hundreds of President Obama’s qualified lower court nominees, Republicans now get to pick many of these judges. And, let’s be clear, the picks come from the wealthiest donors acting through “think-tanks” like the Federalist Society. Does it surprise you that there are some loons amongst these nominees?
Three of them, Kevin Newsom in Alabama, John Bush in Kentucky, and Damien Schiff in the Court of Claims (a national court that hears cases against the government itself), have gone on the record with very rich takes on history. Newsom and Bush say that Roe v Wade is just like Dred Scott. How so? They are both examples of the courts going too far. To quote Bush: “slavery and abortion are the two greatest tragedies in our country.”
Meanwhile, Schiff has gone on the record to compare affirmative action programs at universities to, you guessed it, Dred Scott. He has also criticized schools that teach children that homosexual people have the same sense of right and wrong as heterosexual people.
Can you sense the utter bitterness these judges feel towards the rights of women, LGBT people and racial minorities? These are the sorts of judges that could decide the next local redistricting case or the next Muslim travel ban. Do you think justice will be done?
