[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 186 (Tuesday, November 27, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7121-S7122]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                       Nomination of Thomas Farr

  Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, for decades powerful interests have been 
working to take over our courts and tilt the scales of justice in favor 
of billionaires and giant corporations. President Trump has been all 
in, nominating extreme and partisan judges to the Federal judiciary at 
lightning speed.
  Trump's judges can easily fill a ``Who's Who'' of radical, rightwing, 
pro-corporate lawyers, but today I

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want to focus on the nomination of one of the worst of the worst: 
Thomas Farr, Trump's nominee to serve on the Federal District Court for 
the Eastern District of North Carolina.
  Thomas Farr has made his name as the go-to lawyer for the rich and 
powerful. When the rental car company Avis and its franchisee were sued 
for discriminating against African-American customers, Farr defended 
the franchisee. When Pfizer was sued for sex discrimination and 
creating a hostile work environment, Farr was there once again 
representing the company.
  Today, just a few weeks after millions of Americans went to the polls 
to exercise the basic right at the core of our democracy, I want to 
focus on one of the most pressing reasons my colleagues should vote 
against the Farr nomination. His nomination will only deepen a plague 
of voter suppression aimed at stripping Americans--particularly people 
of color and marginalized groups--from exercising their lawful right to 
vote.
  Voter suppression is front and center on Farr's resume, including his 
work for Jesse Helms, the former U.S. Senator and shameless bigot. Farr 
worked as Helms' campaign lawyer while Helms led some of the most 
blatantly racist political campaigns in modern history. For example, to 
decrease Black turnout, Helms' Senate campaign mailed postcards to 
125,000 voters in predominantly Black precincts, falsely claiming they 
could be found ineligible to vote based on specific criteria involving 
their location and length of residence and warning that they could face 
criminal penalties if they voted.
  That is just the beginning. In recent years, Farr represented the 
North Carolina Legislature in a case challenging a discriminatory 
voting bill that, according to one Federal appeals court, targeted 
African Americans with ``almost surgical precision.'' The legislature 
conducted research into voting practices that helped increase turnout 
among African-American voters and then wrote a bill that essentially 
eliminated each of those practices. Farr was there to defend the 
legislature when faith groups, civil rights groups, and the Obama 
administration's Justice Department challenged the discriminatory law. 
The law was ultimately found unconstitutional by the Federal appeals 
court and was not reinstated by the Supreme Court. Later, when North 
Carolina redrew its district lines in ways that discriminated against 
African Americans, Farr was there once again to defend the legislature.

  Thomas Farr's nomination is particularly troubling given the blizzard 
of efforts in recent years aimed at stopping Americans from casting 
their votes. State after State has passed restrictive voter ID laws, 
purged voting rolls, limited opportunities to register, and erected 
other barriers to the democratic process.
  We saw voter suppression rear its head during this year's midterm 
elections, perhaps most vividly in the State of Georgia. Democratic 
gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams ran a grassroots campaign that 
sought to lift up Georgians from all backgrounds and to lead a record 
turnout vote among African Americans, LGBTQ individuals, and young 
people, but her opponent, Georgia's Secretary of State Brian Kemp, not 
only refused to recuse himself from overseeing the same election that 
he happened to be running in, but he openly used the power of his 
office to suppress voters, especially in communities of color.
  In North Dakota, the Republican-controlled legislature passed a voter 
ID law that required prospective voters to present an ID with an 
address, but not just any ID with an address, one that contained a 
residential street address. Now, this law disproportionately 
disadvantaged voters in Native American communities, which sometimes 
use post office addresses or other kinds of residential addresses, 
rather than residential street addresses.
  What we saw in Georgia and North Dakota was egregious, but it was by 
no means new. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, since 2010, 
24 States, most of which are under Republican control, have implemented 
measures to make it harder for American citizens to vote.
  The Republican Party and President Trump are leading this effort with 
a bull's-eye on Americans who may not be inclined to vote for them. 
After the 2016 election, Trump falsely claimed that millions of people 
voted illegally, and months after taking office, he established a sham 
voter fraud commission. Trump's Justice Department has been in 
lockstep, reversing its position in a case challenging Texas' 
discriminatory voter ID laws, requesting that States turn over voter 
roll information in an apparent move to purge voter rolls, and filing a 
brief in an Ohio case arguing that it should be easier for States to 
purge voters from voter rolls.
  Republicans know that every time they try to lock voters out of the 
Democratic process, they are going to get challenged in court, but they 
have a plan for that. They have been working at breakneck speed to 
stack Federal courts with a cadre of conservative Federal judges whose 
records show that they have no intention of protecting democracy. Why? 
Because the fight for our democracy is a fight over who government 
works for. Does it work for the rich and powerful or does it work for 
all of us?
  Putting Thomas Farr on the bench is a way for politicians to wall off 
access to the democratic process so they can keep on working for 
billionaires and giant corporations. The Eastern District of North 
Carolina, the district in which Farr has been nominated to serve, is 27 
percent African American. Yet the Federal court has not had an African-
American judge--not one, not ever.
  President Obama attempted to change that by nominating two impressive 
African-American women to serve as judges in that district, individuals 
dedicated to ensuring that every American had an equal opportunity to 
democracy, but Republican Senators refused to allow their nominations 
to move forward. Now Republicans want to hand that seat to a man who 
has made it his job to make it harder for North Carolinians to exercise 
the right to vote.
  The literacy tests, poll taxes, and grandfather clauses of the Jim 
Crow era may be of a bygone era, but today, Americans--and particularly 
Americans of color--face new, steep barriers to the ballot box. Farr 
has made it his job to ensure that those barriers remain in place.
  If we truly believe that our court should defend equal justice under 
law, then every Member of this Chamber must vote no on Thomas Farr.