[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 187 (Wednesday, November 28, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7168-S7169]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                       Nomination of Thomas Farr

  Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, I thank my friend, the Senator from 
Florida,

[[Page S7169]]

for speaking out on the critical importance of the Affordable Care Act 
for millions of people in our country and for calling upon this 
administration to support healthcare for all instead of what they are 
doing to the healthcare of millions of people in our country.
  Turning to another matter, nearly 12 years ago, on December 7, 2006, 
President George W. Bush nominated Thomas Farr to be a U.S. District 
Court Judge for the Eastern District of North Carolina. Today, 12 years 
and three nominations later, his name is again before us for 
confirmation to the very same vacancy, which has remained unfilled all 
this time.
  When Mr. Farr was nominated for this vacancy in 2006 and 2007, his 
nomination did not receive a vote in the Judiciary Committee. It was 
known at that time that Mr. Farr had spent his professional life 
engaged in restricting minority voting rights and defending companies 
alleged to have discriminated against African Americans, women, and 
others.
  In the 1980s and in 1990, Mr. Farr represented Senator Jesse Helms, 
notorious for his opposition to civil rights, voting rights, women's 
rights, workers' rights, and LGBTQ rights--in other words, individual 
rights.
  Mr. Farr also helped corporations fight off their employees' 
discrimination claims. In 2003, Mr. Farr defended Blue Cross Blue 
Shield of North Carolina against claims by a female employee who 
alleged that the company had compelled her to resign because of her sex 
and age. To win this case, Mr. Farr convinced the North Carolina 
Supreme Court to strike down the county's antidiscrimination law.
  Given this history of restricting minority voting rights and 
defending companies in discrimination claims, Mr. Farr's nomination did 
not proceed at that time, and rightly so.
  In the 12 years since his first nomination, Mr. Farr has become 
notorious for his defense of the North Carolina legislature's attempts 
to disenfranchise African-American voters.
  His current nomination is opposed by nearly every civil rights group 
in North Carolina and nationally, and the Congressional Black Caucus, 
or the CBC, has fought Mr. Farr's nomination.
  In a 2017 letter to the Judiciary Committee, the CBC wrote: ``It is 
no exaggeration to say that had the White House deliberately sought to 
identify an attorney in North Carolina with a more hostile record on 
African-American voting rights and workers' rights than Thomas Farr, it 
could hardly have done so.''
  This district court vacancy was not filled by President Obama in his 
two terms, but not for lack of trying. President Obama nominated two 
different African-American women for this vacancy, one an assistant 
U.S. Attorney and another a State court judge. Neither nomination moved 
forward because the Republican home State Senators withheld their blue 
slips. Judiciary Committee Chairman Leahy and, later, Chairman Grassley 
both, at that time, abided by the blue-slip process during that period, 
as I said, and no hearings were ever held for these two Obama nominees.

  At the same time, both of my colleagues from North Carolina persisted 
in their desire to confirm Mr. Farr to the Federal bench. Of course, 
now, the return of a blue slip is no longer a barrier to pushing 
nominees through the Judiciary Committee.
  So, on the recommendation of my Senate colleagues from North 
Carolina, Donald Trump nominated Mr. Farr yet again to the seat that 
had been kept open in the Eastern District of North Carolina. In fact, 
when Mr. Farr's nomination was returned at the end of a session of 
Congress last year, the White House decided to renominate him this 
year.
  The history regarding this judicial vacancy and Mr. Farr is key to 
understanding why I and so many of my colleagues will vote no. We will 
be accused of obstruction and wanting to deprive the people of North 
Carolina of a judge in the Eastern District. We will hear how this is 
the longest open vacancy on the entire Federal bench, but, in fact, 
this vacancy has remained open so long because of Republicans' refusal 
to confirm qualified minority women and their insistence on filling 
this vacancy with a man whose career is filled with examples of his 
using the law to advance a racist, obstructionist, plainly un-American 
agenda.
  Had the Republicans not blocked the nominations of qualified minority 
women in 2013 and 2016, this district, which is about 27 percent 
African American, would have had its first African-American judge.
  By contrast Mr. Farr has spent decades opposing the rights of African 
Americans, women, and workers. Let me highlight a few examples.
  When Mr. Farr was working as legal counsel for the 1990 campaign for 
Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, the Justice Department filed a 
Federal lawsuit against the campaign for trying to intimidate thousands 
of African Americans from voting. How did they do this? The Helms 
campaign staff sent postcards suggesting that the voters were 
ineligible to vote and warning that they could be prosecuted if they 
voted. Although Mr. Farr denied any involvement in these racist voter 
intimidation efforts, the Justice Department attorney who investigated 
the matter confirmed that Mr. Farr ``was certainly involved in the 
scheme as it was being developed.''
  That is not the only time Mr. Farr has opposed the rights of African-
American voters. When the North Carolina legislature decided to 
restrict or dilute the votes of African Americans over the past 10 
years, Mr. Farr fiercely defended these efforts as a private attorney.
  In 2013, for example, he defended the North Carolina legislature's 
voter suppression efforts that a court found were enacted with racially 
discriminatory intent--racially discriminatory intent. In other words, 
the North Carolina legislature was totally upfront about what they were 
up to.
  After the Supreme Court effectively struck down the part of the 
Voting Rights Act that required North Carolina to preclear any changes 
to their voting laws, the North Carolina State legislature passed a law 
that eliminated or cut back on voter mechanisms that African Americans 
disproportionately used. This is the law that Mr. Farr defended. The 
Fourth Circuit in that case determined that these voting changes 
``target[ed] African Americans with almost surgical precision.'' In 
other words, blatantly discriminatory intent was found by the Fourth 
Circuit.
  Between his efforts to support suppression of voters, Mr. Farr has 
helped companies avoid accountability for discrimination against 
African Americans, women, and minority groups. In 2003, Mr. Farr argued 
that female employees at Pfizer were not protected under Federal civil 
rights law from condescending, sexist, and sexual comments from their 
manager because they were not ``severe'' or ``pervasive'' enough.
  He even tried to undermine the plaintiff's claim by arguing that she 
failed to point out that her manager ``harassed her because of her 
gender on a daily or weekly basis.'' That was the standard he applied: 
You have to have been harassed on a daily or weekly basis. Mr. Farr 
ultimately convinced the court to dismiss the employee's claim as 
untimely.
  A person who has devoted decades of his legal career to furthering 
oppression and injustices against minorities and women has no business 
being confirmed to a lifetime position as a judge, where his 
ideological agenda will certainly be reflected in his decision.
  I will not vote for Mr. Farr's nomination, and I urge my colleagues 
to do likewise.