Senate Committee Approves Three More Extremist Judicial Nominees, Threatens Civil Rights

WASHINGTON – Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, issued the following statement after the Senate Judiciary Committee voted along party lines to approve U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit nominee Andrew Oldham, Louisiana district court nominee Wendy Vitter; and Texas district court nominee Michael Truncale:

“By advancing Oldham, Vitter, and Truncale to the full Senate, the Senate Judiciary Committee is directly threatening the protection of basic civil and human rights in the Fifth Circuit. The nominees’ refusal to agree that Brown v. Board of Education was correctly decided demonstrates their lack of fitness to fill lifetime seats on the federal judiciary.

All three nominees have records that reflect a hostility to civil and human rights.  Oldham has worked to restrict and undermine voting rights, immigrant rights, women’s access to reproductive care, environmental protection, and gun safety. Vitter’s embrace of fringe and discredited views about reproductive care, her history of hostility to immigrant rights, and her failure to disclose these views to the committee are extremely troubling. Truncale is a partisan, conservative ideologue whose past statements show a hostility to immigrant rights, voting rights, women’s access to reproductive care, workers’ rights, LGBT rights, campaign finance limits, environmental protection, gun safety, and the role of the federal government.

None of these nominees are capable of serving as fair-minded jurists, and the Senate must oppose their confirmations.”

The Leadership Conference has written to the Senate urging opposition to the confirmations of Oldham, Vitter, and Truncale.

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights is a coalition charged by its diverse membership of more than 200 national organizations to promote and protect the rights of all persons in the United States. The Leadership Conference works toward an America as good as its ideals. For more information on The Leadership Conference and its member organizations, visit www.civilrights.org.