SJC Republicans to D.C. Circuit nominee Millett: “It’s not you; it’s the institution.”

By Michelle D. Schwartz
Director of Justice Programs

If there’s a new Era of Good Feelings prevailing in the Senate with respect to President Obama’s nominees to key posts, apparently the Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee didn’t get the memo.
 

Patricia Millett

This morning, they voted in lockstep against sending Patricia Millett—one of the president’s three mainstream, supremely qualified nominees to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals—to the Senate floor.  In doing so, they went out of their way to be clear that their beef was not with the nominee herself, but with allowing the D.C. Circuit to function with a full complement of judges.  In fact, as we have written previously, the Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, led by Ranking Member Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, began their absurd campaign against filling the three vacancies on our nation’s second most important court even before they knew who the nominees were.

In other words, “it’s not you; it’s the institution.”

To paraphrase Troy McClure from The Simpsons, you may remember this argument from such nomination fights as the National Labor Relations Board, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), to name a few.

We hope that, as with those nominees, Senate Republicans come to their senses and allow yes-or-no votes on all three nominees to the D.C. Circuit.  We have good company in that hope.  Just yesterday, we were proud to be one of 97 organizations nationwide to send a letter calling on all senators to allow yes-or-no confirmation votes for Patricia Millett, Cornelia Pillard, and Judge Robert Wilkins.  As we wrote in that letter:

Whether you support or oppose Millett, Pillard, and Wilkins, please allow the American people to see you and your Senate colleagues express that position in a yes-or-no confirmation vote for all three nominees. 

Otherwise, the Era of Good Feelings will be a very short one indeed.