Lambda Legal joined LGBT civil rights organizations Equality North Carolina and Free State Legal, Maryland’s LGBTQ Advocates to urge the Senate Judiciary Committee to oppose the nomination of Allison Rushing to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
In a letter delivered to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Chairman Chuck Grassley and Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein, the organizations wrote in opposition to Rushing on behalf of approximately 1 million LGBT people living in the Fourth Circuit’s jurisdiction. The letter warns that Rushing has expressed a deep hostility to the principles of equality, liberty, justice and dignity under the law for LGBT Americans.
Even though the Senate is in recess until the midterm elections, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley continues to push right-wing extremists through the judicial pipeline. The Committee has never held hearings while the Senate is in recess before an election, and has never held a hearing during any recess without the minority’s consent. In disregarding the Senate’s standard practice of postponing such hearings during recess, Chuck Grassley demonstrates yet again the lengths to which he is prepared to go to pack the federal courts with dangerous Trump judges and how little regard he has for the Senate’s constitutional duty to properly consider lifetime judicial appointments.
Coming on the heels of the deeply flawed Kavanaugh nomination debacle, Chairman Grassley’s actions further undermine whatever legitimacy the Senate Judiciary Committee has left.
Fourth Circuit nominee Allison Rushing is just the latest in a long line of dangerous ideologues who are being rushed through with little opportunity for vetting or meaningful scrutiny of her record and her views. Her public denunciation of the Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision in United States v. Windsor, as well as her career-long association with the extremist anti-LGBT organization, Alliance Defending Freedom, cast serious doubt on any claim that she could provide fair and impartial justice to LGBT litigants who would appear before her.
We urge the Senate Judiciary Committee to reject Ms. Rushing’s nomination to the Fourth Circuit. Her confirmation would cause grave harm to LGBT people, as well as to all members of communities who rely on the federal judiciary of the United States to administer fair and impartial justice.
