Today, Sharon McGowan, Chief Strategy Officer and Legal Director at Lambda Legal, issued the following statement after Senator McConnell announced that he would cancel the U.S. Senate’s August recess in order to advance President Trump’s judicial nominees:
“For the second year in a row, Senator McConnell and President Trump are using every trick in the book to confirm more anti-LGBTQ judges. Cancelling August recess should be a huge warning to everyone across the country that the Trump administration is ramping up its efforts to minimize our community and distort the rule of law by installing their hand-picked anti-LGBTQ judges in every district court and circuit court around the country.
"Yesterday’s decision in Masterpiece Cakeshop left a lot of important questions unanswered – which makes it all the more important that lower court judges, who will be sorting out these issues in the meantime, are people who are able to approach these issues with a commitment to equal justice under law, as opposed to a commitment to promoting the worldview of Donald Trump and Mike Pence.
"In this moment in our history, and in the face of these attacks, fighting for our community means fighting to make sure that LGBTQ people receive fair and impartial justice in our federal courts.”