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When he took office, President Joe Biden vowed that the federal judiciary was going to be remade on his watch to include more women and people of color, more public defenders, and fewer corporate lawyers. In the first few years of his term, he’s had remarkable success in doing just that, seating a record number of federal judges and seeing Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson take a seat on the Supreme Court.
That was done by filling a lot of vacancies that were low-hanging fruit, as well as a number of appeals court seats where GOP opposition was ignored. That’s a key point. The Democratic chair of the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, decided that he’d follow the precedent set by his Republican predecessor and not apply the “blue slip” tradition to appeals court vacancies, just district courts. That decision, grounded in a timidity masked as institutional respect for the Senate, is just one among several that are grinding down the Senate’s work on nominees. Worse, it’s cementing the glide path the far right has created in the judiciary to further its causes.
The blue slip problem has been festering for a while, with Republicans not actually declaring they were going to obstruct nominees using the procedural tool, but still doing so in reality. Last year, Sen. Ron Johnson pulled a fast one by endorsing a nominee and then reversing himself, leaving that nominee hanging. Now Mississippi Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith is actively and loudly using the process in the most cynical and bigoted way to block a district court nominee, Scott Colom, a northeast Mississippi district attorney who also happens to be Black.
RELATED STORY: Enough warnings on blue slips, Sen. Durbin. It’s time to act on it
Hyde-Smith is blocking Colom over two made-up charges: that he is opposed to “protecting the rights of girls and women,” and because he received “significant support ... from George Soros” in his race for district attorney in 2015. Neither of Hyde-Smith’s charges are true.
