[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 111 (Wednesday, July 16, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4514-S4517]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Protect Women's Health from Corporate Interference Act
Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I am here today to express my concerns
with the Supreme Court's recent decision in the Hobby Lobby case and
the steps we are taking--hopefully, this week--to protect a woman's
right to make her own health care decisions. I want to thank Senators
Murray and Udall for their leadership on this issue and for introducing
the Not My Boss's Business Act.
I appreciate hearing from the Republican leader about their interest
in supporting women's access to contraceptive care, and I hope that is
something we can all agree on. But the issue here is not just access to
that care, it is the cost of that care. When you charge women more for
contraceptive coverage, then you are denying them access to that care.
The legislation that has been introduced by Senators Murray and
Udall, and of which I am a cosponsor, will prevent employers from being
involved in an employee's health care decisions and it will reverse the
Supreme Court's decision.
Throughout my career in office, I have fought to ensure that women
have access to important contraceptive services and that women are able
to make their own decisions about their health care with their doctors
and with their families.
In 1999, when I was Governor of New Hampshire, I signed into law a
bipartisan bill that required insurance companies to cover prescription
contraceptives--the issue we are debating right now. I signed that law
with strong bipartisan support because both Republicans and Democrats
knew it was the right thing to do. In fact, that legislation passed in
the New Hampshire House with 121 Democratic votes and 120 Republican
votes and 2 Independents.
That law, passed in 1999, has now provided thousands of New Hampshire
women with the ability to access the medications they and their doctors
decide are right for them because they have that insurance coverage to
pay for those medications. The Affordable Care Act also established
that women would have access to prescription contraceptive services
with no copays, just as New Hampshire did in 1999.
Do you know what is interesting? We are having this debate about
religious objections. Back in 1999 the legislature appointed a
committee to look at whether there were any religious concerns about
what we had done. They came back and reported that this was not an
issue.
A recent analysis by the Department of Health and Human Services
reports that because of the Affordable Care Act, more than 30 million
women are now eligible to receive preventive health services, including
contraception, with no copays. In fact, since 2013 women have saved
nearly $500 million in out-of-pocket costs because of the ACA's
requirement to cover contraceptive care.
The Supreme Court's decision has a real financial bearing on women
and their families throughout the country because this ruling will have
a profound impact on the health and economic security of women
throughout this Nation. As noted by Justice Ginsburg in her dissent in
the Hobby Lobby case, when high cost is a factor, women are more likely
to decide not to pursue certain forms of health care treatments that
involve contraceptive care.
There are many reasons why a doctor may decide to prescribe
contraceptives for a woman's health care needs. Contraceptives can be
used to treat a broad range of medical issues--hair loss,
endometriosis, acne, irregular menstrual cycles. Contraceptives have
also been shown to reduce the risk of certain cancers. But just a few
weeks ago the Supreme Court jeopardized that access to affordable
preventive health care for too many women. As a result of the Hobby
Lobby case, some employers now have the ability to claim religious
objections as a justification for not providing contraceptive health
care with no copay.
I understand the host of issues employers face on a daily basis. I
appreciate the complexity they face when they decide to offer health
insurance coverage to their employees. For example, take Jane Valliere,
who owns Hermanos Mexican restaurant in Concord, NH. I recently had the
opportunity to sit down with Jane and to discuss the Hobby Lobby case.
Jane made it clear that while she has many choices and decisions to
make on a daily basis to keep her business running, she never expected
to be put in a position where she could be responsible for making a
health care decision for her employees at the restaurant.
Like Jane, I do not think it makes sense for employers to make those
personal, private health care decisions for their employees. Critical
health decisions are simply not an employer's business. Where a woman
works should not determine whether she gets insurance coverage that has
been guaranteed to her under Federal law.
While we do not yet know the full extent of the impact from this
ruling, we do know the Supreme Court's decision turns back progress
women across the country have fought for years to achieve.
We must ensure that women have access to the health care services and
medications they need. That means making them affordable, that they are
able to make their own decisions about their care with their doctors
and their families.
Thankfully, we have an opportunity this week to correct the Supreme
Court's shortsighted decision. This week the Senate can stand for women
and pass the Not My Boss's Business Act. A woman's health care decision
should be made with her doctor, with her family, with her faith, not by
her employer and with her employer's faith. I urge my colleagues to
support this bill.
I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Iowa.
Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, later we will be voting on a judge for
the Eastern District of Missouri. I come to the Senate floor today to
explain why, regrettably, I am unable to support the nominee.
As my colleagues know, Justice Ronnie White was originally nominated
by President Clinton during the 105th Congress. This body voted on and
rejected his nomination in 1999. After careful consideration of his
record, I voted against Justice White's nomination at that time. Since
1999, Justice White completed a term as chief justice of the Missouri
Supreme Court and has returned to private practice. So today I would
like to revisit a few aspects of Justice White's legal and judicial
career that first led me to vote against his nomination. I will also
discuss developments since 1999. Unfortunately, his record since that
time has only reinforced my concerns.
First, I begin with some troubling aspects of Justice White's record
during his days on the Missouri Supreme Court in the 1990s. I only need
to point to a few cases to illustrate my concerns.
In the 1998 Johnson case, Justice White was the sole dissenter on the
State's high court. It was a capital appeal case involving a claim of
ineffective assistance of counsel. The case was heartbreaking. The
defendant shot four people to death--three Missouri sheriffs and one of
the sheriffs' wives. The facts were stark and very clear-cut. This was
not a close case.
The defendant was convicted based upon the overwhelming evidence of
his guilt. Justice White conceded there was more than sufficient
evidence to sustain the conviction on appeal, but he went out of his
way to create a standard that was not based on Missouri law when he
evaluated the conduct of the defense attorney. Unsurprisingly, not a
single member of the State court agreed with Justice White's dissenting
opinion. That is because it was obvious there was no reasonable
probability that anything the defense attorney did would have
[[Page S4517]]
changed the outcome of the trial. That is the applicable legal
standard. It is straightforward--very straightforward. In that case,
every member of the State supreme court applied it correctly, except
Justice White.
Unfortunately, Justice White's dissent in that case was not an
isolated example. On a number of other occasions throughout his
judicial career, Justice White misapplied standards of review or
considered issues that were not germane to the law when he was deciding
cases. Justice White has even admitted as much. Discussing his judicial
philosophy, he said in 2005 that he thinks it is appropriate for judges
to let their opinions be ``shaped by their own life experiences.'' I
think the personal characteristics of any judge--what this nominee
calls his ``own life experiences''--should play absolutely no role
whatsoever in the process of judicial decisionmaking. I know my
colleagues on our Judiciary Committee share that view as well.
Let me get back to the nominee's judicial track record. Justice White
was the sole dissenter in another case that the Missouri Supreme Court
decided in 1997. That case raised the question of whether the defendant
was entitled to an additional evidentiary hearing. In his dissent,
joined by none of his colleagues, Justice White again ignored a
straightforward standard of review and wrote that the defendant should
have the hearing because Justice White thought it would cause ``little
harm.'' Here again we see Justice White's personal preferences creeping
into what should be objective, law-based decisionmaking--something
pretty elementary to being a judge at any level, Federal or State, in
our system of jurisprudence.
Those are just two examples of what led me, after consideration of
the nominee's record as a whole, to vote against his nomination in
1999.
Unfortunately, my concerns about Justice White's first nomination
have only been reaffirmed by his subsequent record. For instance, I am
troubled by Justice White's concurrence in the Eighth Amendment case of
Roper v. Simmons. That case was first heard by the Missouri Supreme
Court, was appealed to the Supreme Court, and was eventually affirmed.
But the affirmance is not what my colleagues should focus on. What
should concern my colleagues is the opinion that Justice White
concurred in, which ignored binding Supreme Court precedent. That
precedent was the Stanford v. Kentucky case. I will explain.
In 2003, when Justice White's court decided Roper, binding Supreme
Court precedent at that time permitted applying the death penalty to
individuals if they committed their crimes when they were under 18.
Nonetheless, Justice White concurred in the State court opinion that
simply ignored that precedent. Justice White concurred even though the
Supreme Court had reaffirmed the Stanford principle twice in 2002, the
year before Justice White's state court decision.
Moreover, in 2003 the Supreme Court rejected an appeal raising legal
arguments that were identical to the ones Justice White endorsed. That
is the very same year Justice White's court ruled in Roper and ignored
Stanford outright.
My colleagues on our Judiciary Committee often ask nominees about
their commitment to Supreme Court precedent and their faithfulness to
the doctrine of stare decisis. Nominees who appear before us routinely
repeat the mantra that they will unfailingly apply precedent and
nothing else--in other words, leave out personal views. Justice White
did as much at his hearing as well. But--and this is what I find so
troubling--when I asked him about the Stanford case, he admitted that
Stanford was, in fact, binding on his state court at the time he
concurred in Roper. What he did not explain--what he could not
explain--was why he ignored that binding precedent as a State supreme
court justice. He could not explain why he thought it was appropriate
for him to concur in a State court opinion that, in effect, overruled
U.S. Supreme Court precedent.
I do not doubt that Justice White has always done what he thought was
right and that he ruled the way he thought best to achieve justice for
the litigants before him. But in my view that is not an appropriate
role for a Federal district judge. Judicial decisionmaking requires a
disinterested and objective approach that never takes into account the
judge's life experiences or policy preferences. From the careful look I
have taken at Justice White's 13-year track record as a judge, I have
too many questions about his ability to keep his personal
considerations separate from his judicial opinions.
Finally, it is worth noting that there continues to be opposition to
this nominee from law enforcement.
Specifically, both the National Sheriffs' Association and the
Missouri Sheriffs' Association oppose this nominee.
I always try to give judicial nominees the benefit of doubt when I
have questions about their records, but in this nominee's case, I
simply can't ignore so many indications that the nominee isn't the
right person to occupy a lifetime appointment to the Federal bench.
I sincerely hope I am wrong about Justice White, and I reluctantly
vote no on the nominee.
I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter from
Missouri Sheriffs' Association Training Academy and National Sheriffs'
Association.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the Missouri Sheriffs' Association and Training Academy, May 10,
2014]
Missouri Sheriffs' Association Opposes Confirmation of Ronnie L. White
to the Federal Bench
On behalf of the 115 Sheriffs in the State of Missouri, the
Missouri Sheriffs' Association vehemently opposes the
confirmation of Ronnie L. White to the federal bench.
Victims of crime, families of victims and law enforcement
deserve a better federal judge than Ronnie L. White. As we
explained to Senators Blunt and McCaskill last year, Ronnie
L. White proved himself an activist judge who sought
protection for criminals from punishment given to them by a
jury even in cases where criminals performed unforgiveable
acts of violence against our fellow citizens and law
enforcement.
Ronnie L. White's actions and beliefs doomed his
confirmation in 1999. In 1999, fifty four Senators knew
Ronnie L. White was not the right person for the job based on
the merits of his decisions on the bench. Nothing has changed
since 1999 warranting Ronnie L. White's confirmation this
year.
Senators who want to protect our citizenry from activist
judges like Ronnie L. White should vote against confirmation
just as was done in 1999.
____
National Sheriffs' Association,
Alexandria, VA, April 2, 2014.
Hon. Claire McCaskill,
U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC.
Hon. Roy Blunt,
U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC.
Dear Senator McCaskill and Senator Blunt: I write on behalf
of the National Sheriffs' Association (NSA) and the more than
3,000 elected Sheriffs nationwide to express our support for
the efforts of the Missouri Sheriffs' Association to prevent
the nomination of Ronnie L. White to a federal judgeship in
St. Louis. The Missouri Sheriffs' Association was outspoken
in its opposition to Judge White's previous nomination by
President Bill Clinton and continues to be outspoken against
any further consideration to the federal courts. I
respectfully request that, as you examine candidates for the
federal judgeship in St. Louis, you carefully consider the
concerns presented by the Missouri Sheriffs' Association
regarding any judicial nomination of Ronnie L. White.
Respectfully yours,
Michael Leidholt,
Sheriff NSA President.
Mr. GRASSLEY. I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Republican whip.