[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 82 (Thursday, May 16, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2896-S2897]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                              Nominations

  Mr. CASEY. Madam President, I come to the floor again this morning to 
discuss several judicial nominations considered by the Senate this 
week.
  Earlier this week, the Senate voted to confirm Michael Truncale to 
the Eastern District of Texas and Kenneth Lee to the Ninth Circuit 
Court of Appeals seat in California, and today we will be voting on the 
nomination of Wendy Vitter to the Eastern District of Louisiana.
  The Senate is considering and confirming nominees whose records 
indicate they are far outside the mainstream. I have worked very hard 
over a number of years now--I guess we are in our eighth year--working 
with Senator Toomey, to fill district court vacancies in Pennsylvania 
with well-qualified and experienced judges whom I believe will be able 
to set aside their ideologies or personal beliefs and apply the law to 
the cases before them. But I do not have the same confidence in many of 
the nominees before this body today and especially the nominees we are 
considering.
  I will go in the order that I mentioned before--first, Michael 
Truncale, then Kenneth Lee, and Wendy Vitter. I believe that in all 
three cases, all are not mainstream conservatives. Their backgrounds 
and records are very political, and they have long records of 
advocating for certain positions on issues that may come before them as 
either a U.S. district court judge or an appellate judge.
  First of all, Mr. Truncale has advocated strongly for the repeal of 
the Affordable Care Act, which provided healthcare coverage and 
critical patient protections for 20 million people

[[Page S2897]]

in terms of coverage and tens of millions more in terms of protection.
  He said that the Affordable Care Act would ``lead to the rationing of 
healthcare.'' He has personally advocated for abolishing the Department 
of Education, and he used false, unfounded claims of voter fraud to 
support voter ID laws that disproportionately affect low-income voters 
and communities of color.
  Second, Kenneth Lee was confirmed over the objections of both 
California Senators, Senator Harris and Senator Feinstein--Senator 
Feinstein, in this case, being the ranking member of the Judiciary 
Committee, the very committee that considers judges. Mr. Lee has a 
litany of writings that include offensive statements about immigrants, 
people of color, and LGBT Americans. He has strongly opposed 
affirmative action policies that help make our institutions of higher 
learning more diverse, and it is very possible that he may consider 
matters relating to these policies as a member of the Ninth Circuit.
  Finally, Wendy Vitter has virtually no Federal trial court 
experience, has a long record of opposing contraception, and has 
promoted false information about the safety of oral contraceptives. 
These views are not only outside of the mainstream--the judicial or 
legal mainstream--but they are also not supported by science.
  I don't believe these nominees will be able to set aside their 
personal views and apply relevant precedent, and my concern is 
compounded by recent efforts by conservative jurists to overturn 
longstanding precedents. Most Americans thought that the Voting Rights 
Act, which for decades protected the franchise for Americans of color, 
particularly Black Americans, was a foundational, almost untouchable 
statute. But in 2013, the conservative majority of the Supreme Court, 
which has gotten only more conservative, moved to the right even more. 
That Court, the Supreme Court, gutted the protections of the Voting 
Rights Act in the Shelby County v. Holder case.
  Just last year, in the Janus decision, the Supreme Court overturned a 
four-decades-old precedent in the Abood case that allowed public sector 
unions to collect nonpolitical, so-called fair share fees to cover the 
costs of negotiations that benefit all workers. So you have the union 
doing the work, and the law allowed them, for four decades, to charge 
other employees who benefit from the work of the union, and the Supreme 
Court struck that down.
  Pennsylvania passed a similar law in the 1980s, which has been the 
law of the land in Pennsylvania for years. It was signed into law in 
the late 1980s by my father when he was serving as Governor, so that is 
an important issue in Pennsylvania for working men and women.
  The conservative majority of the Supreme Court overturned the Abood 
case, eviscerating a precedent that was relied upon by public sector 
unions and their governmental employers all over the country. I believe 
the next step by the far right and by this court and maybe by the 
Supreme Court and maybe in another court would be to make illegal the 
very right to organize for wages and benefits. I hope I am wrong about 
that, but I believe that is the logical next step for the right.
  Just this week, a conservative majority of the Supreme Court 
overturned a 40-year precedent regarding States' sovereign immunity in 
the courts of other States. In the last line of his dissent, Justice 
Breyer sounded alarm bells about this kind of judicial activism from 
the right, saying: ``Today's decision can only cause one to wonder 
which cases the court will overrule next.''
  He is right. We no longer know what is civil law and what could be up 
for debate. We thought that Abood was settled law in the context of 
labor unions and the right to organize or an issue related to the right 
to organize. We thought the Voting Rights Act was settled law.
  This week we mark the 65th anniversary of Brown v. Board of 
Education, a unanimous Supreme Court decision holding that segregation 
in our public school system, in addition to being a profound moral 
failure, was a violation of our Constitution. I would hope--we all 
would hope that Brown v. Board of Education would remain rock solid 
settled law. Yet, because of what we have seen in the last couple of 
years with this Court, we must stay vigilant. We cannot let civil 
rights that Americans fought for and earned and have cherished for 
decades be chipped away by extreme judicial nominees who hold 
insuperable political and policy preferences.
  I oppose the nominees that the Senate has considered this week, and I 
will continue to oppose extreme nominees to our Federal courts.
  I yield the floor to the distinguished Democratic leader.