AFJ commends Senate for changing rules

So many people wanted to know our take on this that it crashed our website for awhile, so we posted our statement on today's rules reform victory here.  But the site is back up and you can find out more about Senate rules reform and the D.C. Circuit at www.afj.org

WASHINGTON, D.C., November 21, 2013 – Alliance for Justice President Nan Aron issued the following statement in response to today’s vote to change the rules of the Senate: 

Alliance for Justice commends Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the Senators who voted to change Senate rules today for their courageous decision to end the unprecedented abuse of Senate rules by a Republican minority dedicated to obstruction-at-all-costs.

This was not a decision made easily or taken lightly. There was no choice. The Republican minority had turned the existing rules into weapons of mass obstruction. Most recently, they acknowledged that they had no grounds to oppose on the merits President Obama’s supremely-qualified nominees for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. But they filibustered those nominees anyway.

This change in the rules is the only way to return the Senate to its place as the world’s greatest deliberative body; it is the only way to ensure that the Senate can put the well-being of the American people ahead of the political interests of an extremist minority.

Now that the rules have changed, the Senate must move quickly to confirm President Obama’s D.C. Circuit nominees, and all of the other nominees that, until now, have been held hostage to obstruction. Those nominees include 14 more nominees for judgeships who are currently awaiting Senate floor votes, and executive branch nominees such as Rep. Mel Watt, D-N.C., whose nomination to run the Federal Housing Finance Agency was filibustered last month.

Now the full Senate needs to vote on on Pillard nomination for D.C. Circuit

Alliance for Justice President Nan Aron issued the following statement in response to the vote by the Senate Judiciary Committee today on President Obama’s nomination of Nina Pillard to serve on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit:

We commend the majority of the Senate Judiciary Committee for supporting President Obama’s nomination of Nina Pillard for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.  We are disappointed, but not surprised, that all of the committee’s Republicans chose to put politics ahead of qualifications and opposed this outstanding nominee.

The American people have good reason to be fed up with Republican obstruction and delay.  They demand and deserve courts that have enough judges to administer justice fairly and swiftly.  Americans are entitled to a swift yes-or-no vote by the full Senate on Nina Pillard and President Obama’s other judicial nominees.

Read more about Nina Pillard in this previous post to Justice Watch

AFJ: Senate restores NLRB to full functioning

       Alliance for Justice President Nan Aron released the following statement today in response to the confirmation of President Obama’s nominees to the National Labor Relations Board: 

        With these votes the Senate restores the National Labor Relations Board to full functioning.  That will ensure fundamental protections not just for union members but for all American workers.

For 75 years, the National Labor Relations Act has been the rulebook for relations between businesses and their workers.   But a rulebook is useless without an umpire.  The members of the NLRB are the umpires.  Soon they’ll be back on the field.

But that is not enough.  Obstruction of judicial nominees is every bit as debilitating as obstruction of executive branch nominees.  The same willingness to allow, at long last, yes-or-no votes on the NLRB nominees must extend to the nominees for the D.C. Circuit and other judgeships.

AFJ: Tom Perez will be an outstanding Secretary of Labor

Alliance for Justice President Nan Aron released the following statement today in response to the Senate vote to confirm Tom Perez as Secretary of Labor: 

The new Secretary of Labor:
Tom Perez

We are pleased that the Senate voted to confirm President Obama’s choice to run the Department of Labor. Tom Perez will be an outstanding Secretary of Labor.  He has spent his professional career in public service, committed to ensuring a fairer and more just society.  His confirmation is an important step in the fight for the preservation of the fundamental  rights of working Americans.

This must be only the beginning.  The Senate also should confirm the President's nominees for the National Labor Relations Board and the Environmental Protection Agency.  And it must move swiftly to confirm the president's nominees for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and all federal courts.

Read our previous statements on Tom Perez 

AFJ: Reported agreement on Obama nominees "an important step forward"

               Alliance for Justice President Nan Aron released the following statement today in response to media reports of an agreement concerning seven of President Obama’s executive branch nominations:

                The agreement, as described in media accounts, is an important step forward for the United States Senate and for the American people whose interests are served when government functions.  But it is not the end of the story.  There will be more legislation, more executive nominations and judicial nominees upon which the Senate will need to act over the next several months.  We hope the spirit of this agreement carries over to that business as well.  But if it does not, all options remain on the table for allowing the Senate to evolve in ways that make it a more effective institution.

              Today’s events demonstrate what can happen when a strong, unified, principled stand is taken against obstruction and dysfunction, and we will work hard to ensure that this same sense of purpose and firm resolve will be present when judicial nominations and vital legislation make their way to the Senate floor in the coming months.

            If this agreement fails to cure the culture of obstruction, we will fight for the reforms necessary to end the paralyzing gridlock that has characterized the Senate over the last several months.
 
         

Nan Aron on "The Broken Senate"

This is AFJ President Nan Aron's statement for today's forum at the National Press Club called "Fixing the Broken Senate: Restoring Democracy and Fixing the Filibuster."  

 ●Watch video of the forum at www.afj.org 
 ● Read more about Senate rules reform

Alliance for Justice is very pleased to be a part of this discussion about the “Broken Senate.” I feel like we’re coming to the end of the fifth season of a bad reality show.

Nan Aron

But what’s happening in the Senate is not fiction. It’s very real. The abuse of the filibuster has become a threat to the proper functioning of the government and to public faith in the institution of the Senate.  A recent poll by The Economist put the approval rate of Congress at nine percent. That’s incredible, but not really surprising.  It does make me wonder who those nine percent are. Family members? Campaign consultants?

It’s deplorable that the American people have so little regard for a crucial part of our government. It’s unhealthy for our democracy. And I don’t think there is any question that at least part of the problem has been the rampant misuse of the filibuster in the Senate, which has led to stalemate and gridlock in spite of the enormous problems the country now faces.

Let me be clear about something: The filibuster has a legitimate role when used responsibly. But we have entered an era of unprecedented abuse of rules and traditions, which is forcing the Senate to the brink of drastic action. The filibuster traditionally has been used to allow a minority to make a principled stand on matters of enormous and unusual importance.  It forces the process to slow down and helps ensure that all voices are heard. It’s a signal that something of significance is at stake. But that’s not what’s happening now.

This is the crucial point to understand.  As the motivation behind the filibuster has changed and its frequency increased, its legitimacy has declined. The fights over President Obama’s judicial nominees, for instance, are not ideological in any real sense. The president has gone out of his way to nominate men and women from the legal and political mainstream. Who could honestly say that the filibuster of Caitlin Halligan was some kind of titanic ideological fight?

Today’s filibusters are just crass politics. They reflect a desire to block the president’s agenda at every turn and feed the insatiable need of a hyper-partisan political base for endless obstruction. We’re in an era where one side believes cooperation is a dirty word—or an invitation to a primary challenge. When that intransigent attitude is paired with a procedural weapon as potent as the filibuster, gridlock is the result.  And that’s what makes the situation different today from what it has been in the past. And that’s why the nuclear option is back on the table.


Serious talk about changing the rules has been reborn because the filibuster has evolved from a                            
targeted tool to a weapon of indiscriminate disruption. The entire legislative process is now held captive to this threat. We’ve gotten to the point where just the threat of a filibuster is enough to derail the Senate. The abuse of the process has created a de facto threshold of 60 votes for action—a supermajority requirement for everyday business that can be found nowhere in the Constitution.

It’s important to remember that the problem isn’t just that bills and nominations with clear majorities are stopped, but that many nominations are never made and bills are never proposed, even though they could achieve a simple majority if they were given a chance. There is an invisible price for gridlock that the public never sees.

Obviously, the first test will come in the next few days when cloture petitions are expected to be filed on a series of executive branch nominees—Richard Cordray, Tom Perez, Gina McCarthy, and nominees for the National Labor Relations Board. What happens to these highly qualified nominees will set the tone for the rest of this Congress. If Republicans continue their current behavior and prevent final votes, then the choices will be narrowed to two options: allow crucial agencies that deal with hugely important issues to be left leaderless or reform the rules to permit up-or-down votes.

But the battle over executive nominees is just the beginning. The next big fight looming later this summer is over the President’s three nominees to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.  This is a case of the Republicans engaging in what will be a kind of Group Filibuster, where they don’t even pretend to care about the qualifications or ideologies of the individual nominees.  They just don’t want anyone appointed by President Obama to this crucial court no matter who they are.

Senator Grassley has complained that the President is trying to “pack the court,” as if filling vacant judgeships is some kind of unprecedented power grab. Republicans pretend to be outraged that the president has sent names forward for empty seats on the 11-member D.C. Circuit--just like every other president has done since the Grover Cleveland administration. This would be laughable if the consequences weren’t so serious.

Of course, we know why the Republicans will threaten to filibuster Patricia Millett, Nina Pillard, and Robert Wilkins. The D.C. Circuit is the federal appeals court that most closely oversees the actions of federal agencies on topics like the environment, consumer protections, workers’ rights, banking regulations, and other vital issues. Those are the same issues, by the way, that are at stake in the current executive nominations fights.  In some ways, the two big summer battles over executive and judicial nominations are really one big fight over the future of the country. Fair enough. But the question is, will the Senate be permitted to bring these issues to a final vote on the merits, or will procedural hurdles be erected to prevent democracy from functioning.

So at some point in the next several months, when the three DC Circuit nominees reach the floor, the Senate will have to make another set of choices, just like the ones it will start to face next week on executive nominations. Either accept the obstructionism of a hyper-partisan minority or change the rules to allow the President and the Senate to do the jobs the Constitution demands of them.

For those who care about our democracy and the courts, the choice is easy.

The American people are saying enough is enough. The time for reform is rapidly approaching.

At hearing for ATF nominee, more Republican obstruction

On Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a high-profile hearing on President Obama’s nominee to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, B. Todd Jones.    Jones is an exceptionally qualified nominee.  He currently serves as both the acting director of ATF and as the U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota (a position for which he was unanimously approved by the Judiciary Committee in 2009).

B. Todd Jones

Though ATF plays a critical law enforcement role, including involvement in investigating tragedies like the Sandy Hook school shootings, the Boston Marathon bombing, and the industrial explosion in West, Texas, the agency has not had a permanent director since 2006 – that’s when the law was changed to require Senate confirmation That sad reality may continue, as Republican questions at the  hearing suggest that they may continue to obstruct executive nominees as a way to prevent agencies they don’t like from functioning.

Many Republican questions raised tangential concerns about Jones’s record.  For instance, the Committee’s ranking member, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa)—yes, the very same senator who wants to get rid of three judicial seats on the second most important court in the country, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals—pressed Jones to answer for a botched ATF operation, Fast and Furious.  But Jones  actually was brought in to clean up after the fact.

Moreover, just before the hearing ended, there was a telling exchange between Grassley and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.).  Sen. Grassley requested that the hearing record remain open for longer than the normal one week period, based on the expectation that  there were “a lot of things that could come up.”  Senator Klobuchar agreed to keep it open for two weeks.  Sensing dissatisfaction in Grassley’s reaction, she asked, “What would you like?”  Senator Grassley responded, “Until we get done with this whole [thing].”  While the senators’ quick negotiation seemed to be good-spirited, it sounds like  Sen. Grassley has no interest in quickly moving Jones’s nomination to the Senate floor.  This stonewalling is particularly hypocritical in light of repeated Republican statements that we don’t need new gun laws, we just need to “enforce the laws on the books.”  

Of course, Jones is just one of a slew of highly qualified Obama nominees that Republicans so farhave refused to confirm because they disapprove of the organization itself (see EPA Administrator nominee Gina McCarthy, CFPB director nominee Richard Cordray, Labor Secretary nominee Tom Perez, and three NLRB nominees.  If Republicans continue to hold agencies hostage by unfairly blocking confirmations, the Senate majority should revisit reforming Senate rules.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau strikes blow against forced arbitration

For many of us it may be the most important contract we ever sign.  It’s the contract that sets the terms for what often is our single largest investment – our home.

Richard Cordray

But what happens if the bank that holds our mortgage tries to cheat?  What if they improperly hide fees, or raise rates or even try to foreclose on the property illegally?  Banks have sought to protect themselves by inserting “forced arbitration” clauses into mortgages and home equity loans.

As we’ve noted previously on this Blog, under forced arbitration, consumers who buy defective products or are overcharged for services are barred from taking their cases to court.  Instead, they must use a private arbitration firm chosen and paid for by the business itself.  These clauses also often ban class actions, which allow individuals to band together to bring their common claims.

Having a dispute settled by arbitration is like playing a baseball game in which the other team hires, fires – and pays – the umpires.  One study of top arbitrators for one major arbitration firm found that they rule for the corporations that hire them 93.8 percent of the time.

One of the reasons we refer to the current Supreme Court majority as “The 1% Court” is its enthusiasm for inflicting forced arbitration on consumers.

But Congress drew the line at home mortgages.  Section 1414 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act bans forced arbitration in mortgage disputes.  Regulations implementing the law had to be issued by an agency created by that law – the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  Those regulations took effect June 1. Section 1028 of the Act also mandates that the CFPB study and report to Congress on “the use of agreements providing for arbitration . . . in connection with the offering or providing of consumer products or financial services.”

You remember the CFPB.  That’s the agency Republicans hate so much that they’ve vowed to filibuster anyone President Obama nominates to run it unless the President agrees to eviscerate Wall Street reform.  That includes the current agency director, Richard Cordray, named to the position through a recess appointment that was called into question by a ruling of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The new forced arbitration regulation makes clear what this fight and the other fights over President Obama’s nominees really are all about.  They're about Republicans who can’t stand Wall Street reform or consumer protection or anything that gives everyday Americans a fighting chance against corporate special interests.

That’s why the fights ahead over Cordray, and President Obama’s nominees to the D.C. Circuit and his  nominees for posts like Secretary of Labor, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator and the National Labor Relations Board, are so important.  That’s why, if Senate Republicans refuse to allow yes-or-no votes on these nominees, the Senate majority needs to revisit reforming Senate rules.

This Week in History: Republicans use threat of "nuclear option" to confirm conservative judges to D.C. Circuit and other appellate courts

Over the past week, a chorus of congressional Republicans has criticized President Obama for fulfilling his constitutional duty to nominate qualified individuals for the three open seats on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the second-highest court in the land.  Eight years ago this week, they were singing a far different tune.

On May 23, 2005, the so-called Senate “Gang of 14” agreement set the stage for up-or-down votes on a number of extremely conservative Republican judicial nominees. That agreement paid almost immediate dividends for a slate of conservative judges, particularly during this week in 2005.

On June 8, 2005, the Senate confirmed Janice Rogers Brown – who once referred to the onset of the New Deal as the “triumph of our own socialist revolution” – to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. The next day, the Senate confirmed William Pryor to the 11th Circuit; among other things, Pryor had defended Alabama’s power to execute juveniles and the mentally retarded as the state’s Attorney General. Less than a week later, on June 14, the Senate confirmed Thomas Griffith to the D.C. Circuit. In all, five circuit court judges were confirmed within a week, two of whom still sit on our nation’s second most important court – the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Today, Republicans have engaged in all manner of obstructionism to prevent President Obama’s highly qualified and diverse judicial nominees from ever taking the bench. Nowhere is this more apparent than the D.C. Circuit. Caitlin Halligan was filibustered twice before asking the President to withdraw her nomination, even after she received the American Bar Association’s highest possible rating of unanimously well qualified.
Sri Srinivasan waited nearly a year before he was unanimously confirmed to the D.C. Circuit last month.

Now, Republicans have pushed forward a bill to reduce the size of the D.C. Circuit by three seats, seeking to deny President Obama any opportunity to install judges with a clear respect for the rule of law on a court that is currently dominated by radical conservatives.  Although the confirmations of Janice Rogers Brown and Thomas Griffith brought the D.C. Circuit’s membership to 11 judges, Republicans have apparently decided that with President Obama in office, eight is enough.

President Obama has nominated three highly qualified, uncontroversial nominees to the D.C. Circuit. At the same moment in President George W. Bush’s second term, facing a lower court workload, Republicans threatened to change the rules in order to fill all 11 seats on the D.C. Circuit. While the nominees put forward by President Bush were hyper-partisan, President Obama’s nominees have a clear record of exceptional qualifications and should be swiftly confirmed.

AFJ: There is no excuse for delaying Obama D.C. Circuit nominees

Alliance for Justice President Nan Aron issued the following statement today concerning President Obama’s nominations of Patricia Ann Millett, Cornelia Pillard and Robert Wilkins to serve on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit:

Nan Aron

We applaud President Obama for nominating supremely qualified individuals to the three vacancies on the D.C. Circuit, the nation’s second most important court, and we commend him for sending a bold, public signal that these nominees are a top priority.   These choices also reflect the president’s outstanding record for increasing diversity on the federal bench.  We were pleased to stand with the President at today’s announcement, and we are pleased to stand with him in his effort to fill these seats.  Now Senators must fulfill their constitutional duty by swiftly reviewing and voting yes or no on these nominations.

There is no excuse for delay.  The D.C. Circuit decides cases that affect every aspect of all Americans’ lives, from the air we breathe to workplace safety to the health of our families to the ability to regulate financial institutions.  This court needs to be at full strength in order to manage its critically important caseload, the unique nature of which may well affect the ability of the government to serve the public interest.

 With stakes this high, we are prepared to join with President Obama as he champions the effort to ensure that the Senate fulfills its constitutional obligation to fill the circuit’s ninth, 10th and 11th seats without delay — just as it did during President George W. Bush’s administration.  There has never been a more important time for all who care about the future of our country to mobilize against the destructive tactics of obstruction that have wounded our courts and damaged public confidence in our democratic institutions.

●Read Nan Aron’s column about the D.C. Circuit in The Huffington Post.
●Watch Nan Aron discuss the D.C. Circuit with Melissa Harris Perry on MSNBC
●Read more about the D.C. Circuit.

Democracy on trial in the Senate

Republicans seek to obstruct Obama
executive, judicial nominees

Nan Aron

By Nan Aron
President, 
Alliance for Justice

            With battles ahead over President Obama’s choices for Secretary of Labor, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director and the National Labor Relations Board, and fights over the nation’s second most important court likely to follow, democracy itself is on trial in the United States Senate.

            If Republicans persist in preventing yes-or-no votes on President Obama’s executive and judicial nominees, the only recourse will be for the majority to revisit Senate rules reform and put an end once and for all to Republican efforts to subvert the Senate’s constitutional obligation to provide advice and consent.
 

Richard Cordray

        The first test is likely to come this week. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says he will schedule a vote on President Obama’s nominee to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Richard Cordray.  The CFPB was created as part of the Wall Street Reform law as an agency solely devoted to protecting consumers of financial products from mortgages to credit cards.  In a transparent effort to protect the very special interests that collapsed our economy and brought ruin to so many Americans, Republicans so far have refused to confirm Cordray. In fact, Republicans have said they won’t confirm anyone to run the CFPB.

            Republicans have been equally obstinate about the president’s nominees for the National Labor Relations Board, the independent agency charged with protecting the rights of workers – and a hearing on those nominees just last week showed no thaw in that obstinacy.  That’s why Cordray and some of the current NLRB members had to be named through recess appointments.

            But three Republican-appointed judges of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, breaking with decades of precedent, decided that the President doesn’t have the power to make such recess appointments.  The decision is part of a pattern in which the D.C. Circuit consistently sides with corporate interests over workers and consumers – blocking Wall Street reforms, undermining labor rights, and rolling back environmental protections.

            So it’s no wonder that Republicans also are trying to prevent the president from restoring balance to the D.C. Circuit, which is currently dominated by Republican appointees.  The latest underhanded tactic from Republican Senators amounts to a ‘pre-emptive filibuster’ – an effort to eliminate three of the four vacant judgeships on the court in order to prevent President Obama from filling those seats.

Tom Perez

          But even that isn’t the end of the obstruction.  We are pleased that two Senate committees were able to overcome Republican stalling tactics and vote last week in favor of President Obama’s highly-qualified nominees to lead the Department of Labor and the Environmental Protection Agency.  The next step must be swift yes-or-no votes by the full Senate on the nominations of Tom Perez and Gina McCarthy.

            Unfortunately, these two outstanding nominees’ ordeals may be far from over.  All of the Republicans on both committees voted no.  As AFJ has pointed out before, to Senate Republicans, one of the only things as bad as a Labor Secretary who will protect working people is an Environmental Protection Agency administrator who will protect the environment.

           A solid majority of voters twice has made clear that they support the approach to government taken by Barack Obama.  In response, the Republican strategy boils down to rule-or-ruin.  They have shown themselves prepared to paralyze government, no matter what the cost to the American people.  In the days ahead, we will see if the Senate is ready to break free of this paralysis.

Grassley deserves "A" for creativity, "F" for content on "pre-emptive filibuster" of D.C. Circuit nominees

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) deserves “an ‘A’ for creativity but an ‘F’ for content” for his scheme to obstruct future nominees to the nation’s second most important court, Alliance for Justice President Nan Aron said Thursday.

Aron was referring to Grassley’s plan to eliminate three of the four vacant judgeships on the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, a plan he raised again at a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting Thursday.

During that meeting, the committee voted in favor of president Obama’s nomination of Sri Srinivasan to fill one of four vacancies on the 11-judge court.  “But don’t be fooled: Today’s vote by no means shows Republicans’ willingness to stop playing games with the president’s nominees.  During the same meeting, Grassley announced what amounts to a ‘pre-emptive filibuster,' declaring his intent to eliminate the other three vacancies on the D.C. Circuit, effectively blocking any nominees to those seats,” Aron said.

Grassley cited what he claimed is a light workload for the court, based solely on the number of cases handled by each judge.  “That claim is as nonsensical as it is hypocritical,” Aron said.

Patricia Wald

“As the court’s former Chief Judge, Patricia Wald, has written, ‘The D.C. Circuit hears the most complex, time-consuming, labyrinthine disputes over regulations with the greatest impact on ordinary Americans’ lives . . . . These cases can require thousands of hours of preparation by the judges, often consuming days of argument, involving hundreds of parties and interveners, and necessitating dozens of briefs and thousands of pages of record – all of which culminates in lengthy, technically intricate legal opinions.’”

Aron also noted that “less than a week ago, at another meeting of the same committee, Sen. Grassley’s close Republican ally, Sen. Jeff Sessions said it was wrong to measure caseload by raw numbers without factoring in complexity.

“The hypocrisy is clear when one looks at Sen. Grassley’s own record.  When the caseload on the court was lighter than it is now, Sen. Grassley supported President George W. Bush’s nominees to fill all eleven seats on the court.

“The current majority on the D.C. Circuit has used its power to issue decisions undermining protections for workers, consumers, and the environment that affect all Americans,” Aron said. “Sen. Grassley and his allies are using every trick in the book to try to keep it that way.”

“If the Republican obsession with obstruction persists,” Aron said, “then the Senate majority must reform Senate rules to allow the will of the majority of Americans to prevail.”

Read more about the D.C. Circuit 
Read more about Grassley’s plan 

Republicans turn Senate rules, traditions into weapons of mass obstruction

Republican obstruction of the president’s nominees on the Senate floor through use of (often silent) filibusters has been well-documented, but in the past two days the public has seen what those of us working on judicial nominees have known for far too long – the obstruction is often just as bad at the committee level.

Gina McCarthy

Just one day after using an arcane procedural maneuver to delay a committee vote on the nomination of Tom Perez to serve as Secretary of Labor, Senate Republicans have used another underhanded ploy to delay a committee vote on the nomination of Gina McCarthy to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.  They boycotted a meeting of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works to prevent the Committee from even holding a vote.  Committee Republicans could hardly argue they lacked sufficient information to form an opinion on McCarthy – she answered more than 1,000 questions from committee members.

On one level this behavior is understandable.  To Senate Republicans, one of the only things as bad as a Labor Secretary who will protect working people is an Environmental Protection Agency administrator who will protect the environment.  But the brazen nature of these committee delay tactics is shocking nonetheless.

Unfortunately, in the context of judicial nominations, such committee delays have become commonplace – and start even earlier in the process.  By committee tradition,* the Senate Judiciary Committee typically won’t hold a hearing on a judicial nominee unless both home-state senators agree to allow the nomination to move forward.    Like any such tradition, it works only as long as it is not exploited.  But that is exactly what Senate Republicans are doing now.

That means some judicial nominees are stuck in limbo waiting for Judiciary Committee hearings months or years after they were nominated.  In many more cases, the White House – reluctant to impose that fate on nominees – is left waiting in vain for Republican home-state senators to help identify acceptable candidates.

And, coming full circle, hanging over all of this obstruction at the committee level (and sometimes before) is the knowledge that even if nominees survive those obstacles, they face the specter of the filibuster once they reach the floor.  The events of the past two days make clear, once again, that the weak-kneed agreement on Senate rules reached in January cannot come close to constraining the Republicans’ willingness to turn rules and traditions into weapons of mass obstruction.  The Senate needs to back to the drawing board and enact tough-minded rules reform now.

Read more about obstruction by Senate Republicans:

• In-depth report from The Huffington Post on how Republicans obstruct judicial nominees.
• Our overview of the need for Senate Rules Reform.
• The website of the rules reform coalition Fix The Senate Now.

*-Although this tradition has been in place to some degree for many years, not all Judiciary Committee chairmen have been as generous as the current one in waiting for both home-state senators to indicate assent before holding a hearing.

AFJ blasts "give them an inch and they take a mile" Republicans on Perez nomination

Alliance for Justice President Nan Aron issued the following statement in response to today’s postponement of a vote by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on the nomination of Tom Perez to be Secretary of Labor:

Tom Perez

The “give them an inch and they take a mile” Senate Republicans, after being given the courtesy of a two-week delay on Tom Perez’s committee vote to serve as Secretary of Labor, today invoked an arcane procedural maneuver to delay that vote for yet another week.

As he has throughout his career, as labor secretary Tom Perez will stand up for the rights of working people.  For Senate Republicans that’s exactly the problem.  So Perez has become the latest target of a never-ending Republican campaign of fear, smear and obstruction.

The delays must stop here.  It’s time to confirm Tom Perez and give working Americans the champion they deserve.

Read more about Tom Perez at www.confirmperez.org

Supreme Court should hear appeal of recess appointment decision ASAP

As expected, the Obama Administration is asking the Supreme Court to review a ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that nearly eliminates the ability of a president to make “recess appointments” to federal agencies.

Caitlin Halligan

With Senate Republicans abusing the filibuster at an unprecedented rate, a recess appointment sometimes is the only way to fill vacancies.  Indeed, Republicans have used the filibuster to cripple agencies they don’t like, such as the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

But when the president used his only alternative, recess appointments, the D.C. Circuit broke with decades of precedent and decisions from every other circuit to rule on the issue to invalidate those appointments.   The decision being appealed now, discussed in detail in this previous post to Justice Watch, left the entire NLRB in limbo.   That post also discusses the fact that this kind of extreme activism is nothing new for the conservatives on the D.C. Circuit – a court widely viewed as the nation’s second most powerful.

They get away with it because there are four vacancies on the eleven-member court, and among the remaining seven judges, conservatives hold a majority.  Senate Republicans are going to extremes to try to keep it that way.  First, they filibustered an excellent nominee, Caitlin Halligan, and now some Republicans are trying to eliminate three of the Court’s seats.

The Supreme Court should hear this challenge as soon as possible.  President Obama needs to move full speed ahead and send the Senate enough nominees to fill every vacancy on the court.  And Senate Democrats need to reform Senate rules, if that’s what it takes, to break the Republican addiction to obstruction.

Alliance for Justice urges swift confirmation of Secretary of Labor nominee Tom Perez

On April 18, Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez, President Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Labor, testified before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions.

When Tom Perez took leadership of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division in 2009, he took over a unit “demoralized by its political leadership and diverted from its traditional tasks.” As former Deputy Attorney General David Ogden explains in The Huffington Post:

In particular, as found in an Inspector General report issued in January 2009, the Division had implemented illegal personnel practices, including making hiring decisions and case assignments based on partisanship rather than merit, and we observed that there were severe continuing consequences for morale, management, and effectiveness.

Fortunately, under Perez’s stewardship, the Civil Rights Division has experienced a remarkable turnaround, restoring its reputation as a stalwart defender of federal civil rights laws. Over the last four years, the Division has renewed enforcement of predatory lending, disability, employment discrimination, hate crimes, and veterans’ rights laws.

Furthermore,  Perez enjoys broad, bipartisan support. Dozens of groups, from civil rights advocates to business leaders, have written letters endorsing his nomination and urging his confirmation as Secretary of Labor. However, a minority of Republicans have threatened to filibuster, continuing an addiction to obstruction of President Obama’s nominees.

There is no doubt that Tom Perez is a highly qualified, dedicated nominee to serve as Secretary of Labor. He has spent his professional career in public service, committed to ensuring a fairer and more just society for all Americans. Alliance for Justice strongly endorses Assistant Attorney General Perez’s nomination as Secretary of Labor, and we hope for his swift confirmation.

Alliance for Justice is proud to join with more than 80 other organizations in supporting this nomination.  Learn more about Tom Perez here. 

You can help get Tom Perez confirmed.  Sign our Action Alert

Sen. Charles Schumer on the second most important court in America

As we've noted in the two previous posts to this blog, right now more than one-third of the seats on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit – four out of 11 - are vacant. Last month, a Republican filibuster prevented a highly-qualified nominee, Caitlin Halligan, from filling one of those seats.

Earlier this week, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on another nominee, Sri Srinivasan. But even if Srinivasan ultimately is confirmed, that still leaves three vacancies on what has been called the second most important court in America.

In this excerpt from a speech in Brooklyn on March 10, Sen. Charles Schumer (D – N.Y.) talks about why this court is so important – and about the need for Senate rules reform if Republicans continue to use the filibuster to block D.C. Circuit nominees:

AFJ condemns Grassley "court-packing scheme"

The previous post to this blog discusses misleading claims by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa). Now, he's at it again. Here's AFJ's response:

Legislation sponsored by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) to reduce the number of judges on what is widely viewed as the nation’s second most important federal court is a "court-packing scheme" to keep the court in the hands of staunch conservatives, according to Alliance for Justice.

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa)

Claims by Grassley and others that the court's workload doesn't justify the current number of judges are “false and hypocritical,” said AFJ President Nan Aron.

“There is more than one way to pack a court to suit one’s ideological preferences,” said Aron.  “Now that they are facing increasing pressure to stop blocking President Obama’s nominees, Republicans have come up with a new plan: just get rid of the vacancies.”

At issue is the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The D.C. Circuit most closely oversees actions of federal regulatory agencies.

“The conservative majority on the D.C. Circuit has used its power to issue decisions undermining protections for workers, consumers, and the environment that affect all Americans,” Aron said. “This activism is possible only because there are four vacancies on the court. 

“When the caseload on the court was lighter than it is now, Sen. Grassley supported President George W. Bush’s nominees to fill all eleven seats on the court.  But now that President Obama has the opportunity to restore balance to the court, Sen. Grassley proposes to get rid of the vacancies by eliminating three of the 11 seats on the court.”

Aron noted that Grassley’s caseload calculations fail to take into account the extraordinary complexity of many cases heard by the D.C. Circuit.

For an explanation of the importance of the D.C. Circuit and examples of its majority’s political agenda, see our briefing paper on the D.C. Circuit.

AFJ responds to withdrawal of Halligan nomination

The White House announced late Friday that it is withdrawing the nomination of Caitlin Halligan to serve on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.  Here is AFJ President Nan Aron's response:

Caitlin Halligan

The withdrawal of this highly-qualified nominee is one more illustration of the extent to which Republicans have used unprecedented, partisan obstruction to hijack the United States Senate.  It is still another indication, as if any were needed, that Senate Democrats need to revisit Senate rules reform, and stand up to the tyranny of the minority.

We are confident that President Obama now will press ahead with nominating individuals to fill all three D.C. Circuit  vacancies still  without nominees – and will make the fight for these nominees a top priority.  

Read more about Caitlin Halligan here.

Halligan cloture vote shows Republican senators are addicted to obstruction

UPDATE: AFJ President Nan Aron discusses the filibuster of Caitlin Halligan on the March 9 edition of MSNBC's Up With Chris Hayes:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

In the previous post to this blog, we said that today's cloture vote on the nomination of Caitlin Halligan for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit would tell us if Senate rules reform is for real.

A short time ago, we got the answer.  Here is AFJ President Nan Aron's statement concerning the defeat of the cloture motion:

Caitlin Halligan

Earlier this week, we urged Republican senators finally to put partisanship and obstruction aside and vote for cloture on the nomination of Caitlin Halligan to serve on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

But it appears that urging Republican senators to rise above partisanship is like urging three-pack-a-day smokers to “just say no” to tobacco.

 Today, Republican Senators proved themselves to be addicted to obstruction, and utterly uninterested in putting the needs of the American people ahead of partisan posturing.

 As a result, for the second time in two years, Americans have been denied the services of a highly qualified nominee to serve on what is widely considered the nation’s second most important court.

There is no justification for this level of opposition.  Halligan’s nomination has strong bipartisan support, including endorsements from the National District Attorneys Association, the New York State Sheriff’s Association and two former assistants to Solicitors General under Republican administrations.  Her credentials are impeccable and she was rated “well qualified” by the American Bar Association. 

 The vote today also makes clear that the recent agreement to ‘reform’ Senate rules really was no agreement at all, but rather a blank check for continued obstruction.  We believe the Senate majority needs to reconsider the terms of this agreement, and revisit serious rules reform.

One could argue that Caitlin Halligan was the victim of partisan obstruction, but it’s more than that: the American people are the victims.  Not only is a well-qualified nominee once again in limbo, the D.C. Circuit will continue to limp along with four of its 11 seats vacant.

 Read more about Caitlin Halligan and the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals