By Jorge Gomez
First Liberty Institute
Over the past four years, the Biden administration has put forth dozens of radical and controversial judicial nominees, many of which have a dismal record on religious freedom.
First Liberty has consistently warned that many of President Biden’s nominees simply do not inspire confidence that they’ll treat all Americans equally. Instead, their records suggest they could be hostile to religious liberty and unconstitutionally advance their own policy agendas from the federal bench.
Experts and court watchers are now warning that this trend could continue if Vice President Kamala Harris wins the presidential race. They say a Harris administration would mean even more radical nominees and federal judges than those picked by President Biden.
“Vice President Kamala Harris’ past questions during judicial nomination hearings signal her top priority when selecting judges is ensuring they will advance left-wing goals,” according to experts interviewed by the Daily Caller.
Thomas Jipping, senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, says that Harris’s questions during hearings “clearly reflect her view of a political judiciary in which judges make result-oriented decisions based on personal views.”
“The liberal view of the judiciary is political and their goal is to appoint judges who will reliably advance liberal political interests,” he added. “Liberals believe that judges’ personal views, more than the law, drive their decisions and, therefore, press to uncover nominees’ personal views on particular issues.”
According to Carrie Severino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network, Harris frequently used nomination hearings as a “performative” opportunity so that she could “grab the spotlight” and be “flagrantly liberal.”
Severino brought attention to Harris’s questioning of a federal judicial nominee in 2018, when she took issue with his membership in the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic service organization. In National Review, Alexandra DeSanctis of the Ethics and Public Policy Center said Harris tried to suggest that “belonging to a Catholic group with millions of members, which has been an important charity in the U.S. for more than a century, renders an individual unfit to serve as a judge.”
“If you look at the type of questions she’s asking, she clearly misunderstands the role of the court,” noted Severino. “That seems to play into a lot of the anti-Catholic rhetoric that has been, unfortunately, in vogue in some Democrat circles.”
These are all big red flags that Harris could use judicial appointments “to pander to left-wing dark money groups that are constantly calling for more radical nominees,” Severino concluded.
There’s also concern about who could advise Harris on nominations. Her communications director, Brian Fallon, previously worked as the executive director for Demand Justice, a self-proclaimed “progressive movement to restore the ideological balance and legitimacy of our federal courts by advocating for court reform.”
Demand Justice is among the country’s most radical organizations. They’re vocal proponents of court-packing and other extreme “reforms” to the judiciary, including ending life tenure for Supreme Court justices and giving Congress the power to enforce a “code of ethics.” The organization recently said it will spend $10 million to push for these sweeping changes to the nation’s highest court.
Demand Justice has also expressed support for some of President Biden’s most controversial nominees. The group signed onto a letter that urged U.S. senators to confirm Adeel Mangi to a federal appeals court. Mangi’s nomination has drawn considerable opposition from a broad coalition, namely over his concerning affiliation with an organization that promotes anti-Semitism.
Despite Mangi’s alarming record, the letter referred to him as “fair-minded “and someone with “impeccable qualifications.”
As Vice President, Harris cast a record number of tie-breaking votes in the U.S. Senate, PBS reported. Most of those votes were for President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees and include some radical picks for the federal bench. Harris broke a nearly 200-year-old record last December when she cast the deciding vote to confirm Loren AliKhan as a district court judge. Harris cast a 32nd tiebreaking vote to surpass the previous record holder, John C. Calhoun, who cast 31 tiebreaking votes during his eight years as vice president.
First Liberty sounded the alarm about AliKhan’s record on religious liberty during her nomination process. AliKhan argued against religious freedom in First Liberty’s case involving Capitol Hill Baptist Church during the pandemic. She said that religious services and religious people posed a “greater risk” of infection than people gathered for mass protests.
Federal judges have tremendous influence. Their rulings impact Americans’ rights and liberties, which is why anyone with a record hostile to religious freedom should not become a federal judge. First Liberty is keeping a close eye on who is selected to sit on America’s courts. We’ll continue providing the facts on any nominees with a radical or unacceptable record.
Read More:
Daily Caller: ‘Political Judiciary’: Kamala Harris’ Antics During Nomination Hearings Indicate ‘Radical’ Judges She Would Nominate
Tampa Free Press: Kamala Harris’ Antics During Nomination Hearings Indicate ‘Radical’ Judges She Would Nominate
