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This is
it: This week, Senate Majority
Leader Bill Frist activated the launch sequence on the nuclear
option as he directed the Senate to
take up the nomination of Priscilla
Owen. A vote on whether
to change the rules governing filibusters of judicial nominations
will likely come late this week or early next
week.
If
Senator Frist succeeds, the Senate minority will no longer be able
to use the filibuster to block judicial nominees, and the path will be cleared for the confirmation of all
the Administration’s controversial nominees,
including any future nominees to the Supreme Court.
Take These Three Easy Steps to Protect
the Courts TODAY!
• Step
#1: Call your Senators. Please call your
Senators to tell them to vote “NO” on
the Nuclear Option, and to stop the confirmations of
nominees like Owen and Janice Rogers Brown who are hostile to
women’s rights. You can call
202-244-3121 or find their D.C.
office numbers.
• Step #2: Email your
Senators. You can use our
sample email, or write your own.
• Step #3: Ask five
friends to contact their Senators. Make a
personal commitment to make sure that five friends, family members,
or colleagues contact their Senators as well.
Senator Frist
has made clear that he intends to use two female nominees to trigger
the “nuclear option,” and some of his colleagues have suggested that
those who oppose these nominees are opposed to progress for
women. But what would really
threaten progress to women is the confirmation of nominees like
these, who are overtly hostile to women’s
rights:
• Priscilla
Owen
has sought to restrict women’s reproductive rights at nearly every
turn during her tenure on the Texas Supreme Court, ignoring state
law in doing so. In one case, she interpreted a Texas law so
incorrectly that a fellow Justice on her court – Alberto Gonzales,
who is now U.S. Attorney General – called her position “an
unconscionable act of judicial activism.”
• Janice Rogers
Brown,
now on the California Supreme Court, called the New Deal a
“socialist revolution,” and the Washington Post described her as
“one of the most unapologetically ideological nominees of either
party in many years.”
Your Senators need to
hear from you and from your friends right away. They need to
know that you support an independent judiciary system that honors
women’s rights. Act
now to protect the courts that will protect our
future.
Is your Senator on the
Fence?
If you live in the
following states, it is particularly important that you call
and e-mail
your Senators, since one or both of your Senators’ votes could make
the difference:
Alaska
(Senator Lisa Murkowski)
Indiana (Senator
Richard Lugar)
Maine (Senator Susan
Collins)
Nebraska (Senators Chuck Hagel and Ben
Nelson)
New Hampshire (Senator John
Sununu)
Ohio (Senator Mike
DeWine)
Oregon (Senator Gordon
Smith)
Pennsylvania (Senator Arlen
Specter)
Rhode Island (Senator Lincoln
Chafee)
Background
For over 200
years, Senators have had the power to block legislation and other
action—such as votes on a judicial nominee—by engaging in unlimited
debate, or “filibuster.” Senators of both parties have
used filibusters to block judicial nominees in the
past.
In the last several
years, Democratic Senators have confirmed over 200 of President
Bush’s judicial nominees, and have filibustered 10—individuals like
Janice Rogers
Brown, who
called the New Deal, the era that brought us Social Security and
child-labor laws, “our socialist revolution,” and William Pryor, who called Roe v. Wade “the
worst abomination of constitutional law in our history.” By
contrast, Republicans blocked over 60 of President Clinton’s
nominees, often because just one Senator objected.
Now Senate Majority Leader Frist has
proposed to change the longstanding Senate rules to eliminate the possibility of
filibusters of judicial nominees. This is an illegitimate
trick, because it would allow Senator Frist to change the rules with
the agreement of just a bare majority of Senators, even though the
rules themselves say a rules change requires the agreement of 67
Senators. It is also an attack on one of the most important
protections for the rights of the minority party against the tyranny
of the majority.
The short-term result
of the “nuclear option” would be that all of the Administrations
current nominees, no matter how extreme would be confirmed. In
as little as a few months, if Chief Justice Rehnquist retires from
the Supreme Court, it would mean that the President could appoint
anyone he wants to the Supreme Court. Many rights that
American women hold dear, including the right to privacy and the
right to equal protection of the laws, will be threatened if just one more
Supreme Court justice hostile to those rights is
confirmed.
For more information,
see NWLC’s website on judges and
judicial nominations. |
