[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 66 (Wednesday, May 18, 2005)]
[House]
[Page H3546]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         JUDICIAL APPOINTMENTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton) is recognized 
for 5 minutes.
  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, the Congressional Black Caucus has been in 
the forefront of the fight to preserve the filibuster, a much-used, 
indeed used more against African Americans than any others. We do not 
want to see and will not stand to see the rules changed when it could 
now be used to protect us from judges who would overturn our rights.
  We have supported the idea of a compromise, if one could be found; 
but I come to the floor this evening to say that we are horrified to 
hear of a possible compromise involving two judges that would be most 
unacceptable to the 43 members of the Congressional Black Caucus who 
unanimously oppose elimination of the filibuster and unanimously oppose 
these two judges: Attorney General William Pryor, who would be 
nominated to the 11th Circuit; and Janice Rogers Brown, who would be 
nominated to the D.C. Court of Appeals.
  Briefly, Attorney General Pryor in this year when we are starting the 
reauthorization of the 1965 Voting Rights Act would simply be totally 
unacceptable to us and we think to most Americans. This is a man who 
sought to repeal the critical section of the Voting Rights Act, who has 
indicated that some rights now protected by the Constitution should be 
regarded as social disputes and essentially has indicated that some of 
these rights now protected by the Constitution should indeed be left to 
the States. This is a man who belongs perhaps on the Supreme Court in 
the 19th century, not today.
  We are particularly insulted that President Bush would resubmit the 
name of Janice Rogers Brown. Has he done so because she is African 
American and somehow he believes that for that reason people will go 
easy on her and not look at what in fact she has stood for? We regard 
her nomination as nothing short of insulting. When she was first 
nominated to the California Supreme Court, the signal from the 
California Association of Black Lawyers who opposed her nomination was 
that her appointment could be detrimental, as they put it, to black 
America with nothing short of, as they put it, far reaching 
circumstances for generations to come. How right they proved to be. 
When she was renominated to the California Supreme Court, 20 of the 23 
members of the California bar found her to be not qualified because of 
the way she inserted her personal opinions, her personal views, into 
her judicial opinions.
  Janice Rogers Brown and the rule of law are strangers. She has no 
regard for precedent. How else to explain a ruling of hers where she 
found that racially derogatory on-the-job speech was unconstitutional 
even though the Supreme Court long ago found that such speech is not 
protected by title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Why did she find 
herself in dissent reaching this conclusion?
  I recite the cases because you hear that these judges are extreme. We 
mean to make you understand, hopefully, what we mean by extreme. 
Proposition 209 passed, an anti-affirmative action proposition, passed 
in California. The judge who was on her side of the case, the Chief 
Justice, Ronald George, also appointed by Governor Pete Wilson, said 
when he read her concurrence, remember, concurrence with him, that the 
concurrence raised ``a serious distortion of history,'' indicating that 
it would be widely and correctly viewed as presenting an unfair and 
inaccurate caricature of affirmative action programs. When a judge on 
your side appointed by the same Governor as you characterizes your 
agreement with him in this way, is he not telling the Senate something 
it must listen to?
  Here is a woman who found that black women in a case involving a 
prosecution where the prosecution may have used racial preemptory 
challenges found that black women are not a cognizable group. Again, 
she has often found herself in dissent even from her own Republican 
colleagues.
  We do not need this woman on the District of Columbia Court of 
Appeals where she would bring her views that ``the New Deal was the 
triumph of our own socialist revolution'' to Washington.

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