6-10-05, 10:03 am

In a mostly party line vote last night, William Pryor became the third Bush judicial appointee to be confirmed by the Senate in the last week. Pryor’s confirmation was met by sharp criticism.

Opposition to seating Pryor to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, a lifetime position, was so broad at least one Republican organization opposed him.

'It is incredibly rare for our organization to oppose a Republican judicial nomination,' said Christopher Barron of the Log Cabin Republicans, an organization for Republicans who support gay and lesbian civil rights. 'Mr. Pryor’s record, however, is so out of step with mainstream Republican values and contemporary jurisprudence that Log Cabin is compelled to forcefully oppose his nomination.'

Pryor has expressed his antipathy to gay people in his position as attorney general of Alabama by going out of his way to intervene in a Supreme Court case that dealt with a Texas law criminalizing the private sexual acts of gay people. Further, Pryor, while sitting as an unconfirmed 'recess appointment' to the 11th Circuit court, voted to uphold a Florida law to discriminate against gay couples seeking to adopt children.

In both cases, Pryor took the position that special laws that discriminate against gay people because they are gay are Constitutional, and that the federal government can intervene justifiably in the personal lives of some people simply because they are gay.

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), a non-partisan organization that advocates for gay and lesbian civil rights, condemned the confirmation. 'The American people deserve justice, not prejudice,' said HRC President Joe Solmonese. 'Anyone who lets their own personal prejudices shape their decisions from the bench poses a threat to the rights of all Americans.'

Pryor hasn’t let his anti-gay bias stand in the way of his opposition to other basic federal protections of civil rights. In his activist and ideologically motivated quest to advance a far-right agenda, Pryor has used his various positions to attempt to strip and chip away at a whole range of civil rights protections.
As Alabama’s attorney general, Pryor sought to strike down parts of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and the Clean Water Act (CWA).

He filed briefs calling for eliminating protections in the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Endangered Species Act.

He testified in Congress against EPA enforcement of the Clean Air Act. He urged a congressional committee, to 'consider seriously...the repeal or amendment of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which [he labeled an] affront to federalism and an expansive burden that has far outlived its usefulness.'

He described as 'antidemocratic' two Supreme Court decisions invalidating a Virginia public college’s male-only admissions policy and a Colorado ban on city and county laws protecting gays from discrimination.

He also strongly opposes women’s reproductive rights and rejects the basic Constitutional principle of the separation of church and state, calling for 'restoring [America’s] Christian perspective.'

He has argued that states shouldn’t be responsible for providing lawyers to represent defendants who don’t have the resources to hire lawyers. He argued in favor of executing mentally disabled defendants who commit capital crimes. Further, Pryor argued in favor of laws that allowed the police in Alabama to treat criminal suspects in a manner that the Supreme Court would ultimately decide was 'antithetical to human dignity.'

Critics describe Pryor’s support for states’ rights as a cover for eliminating a host of civil rights protections for numerous social groups, from women, to minorities, non-Christians, the disabled and gays and lesbians.

A press statement released by the National Organization for Women described Pryor’s confirmation as 'a slap in the face to women, people of color, people with disabilities, the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community, and anyone who believes in the separation of church and state.'

Jim Ward, president of ADA Watch/National Coalition for Disability Rights, said, 'More than 60 disability organizations have joined a total of more than 200 organizations opposed to the confirmation of Mr. Pryor to a lifetime seat on the Federal court.'

'As Jews,' said Phyllis Snyder, president of the National Council of Jewish Women. 'We know what it means to have fundamental rights and liberties stripped away – and given that history, William Pryor sets off alarm bells.'

Environmental advocacy groups including Earthjustice challenged Pryor’s positions on key environmental laws. 'Mr. Pryor aggressively pursued sweeping efforts to invalidate core environmental protections as unconstitutional, sided with corporate polluters by failing to crack down on clean water violations, and opposed the EPA’s enforcement of Clean Air Act safeguards against power-plant and oil-refinery pollution that harms downwind states,' said Glenn Sugameli, Senior Legislative Counsel at Earthjustice.

Sugameli described the appointment of Pryor as a tactic to use the courts to strike down environmental protections on behalf of big polluters because Congress has so far failed to take the appropriate measures.

Pryor has been fiercely devoted to dismantling legislative and constitutional protections for ordinary Americans. 'He has been an outspoken opponent of worker and consumer rights, reproductive rights, environmental protections, the separation of church and state, gay and lesbian rights, and the rights of the accused,' Nan Aron of the Alliance for Justice, a 25-year old non-partisan civil rights advocacy group, said.

'He has also been a staunch advocate for big tobacco, states’ rights, and the gun lobby. His elevation to a lifetime seat is a blow to rights and protections for ordinary Americans,' continued Aron.

Pryor has been accused of using his political positions and appointments as a bully pulpit to push his own personal views into law and also to advance his political career in the process. Pryor’s intervention in the Texas and Florida cases earned him support from the religious right wing of the Republican Party and launched his career from the state to the national level.

Pryor’s career was also aided by a massive fund-raising effort he helped put together in the form of Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), which raises campaign donations from corporations. The main problem with an organization like RAGA is that attorneys general may have a duty to investigate, prosecute or sue corporations who give to it, raising the specter of impropriety and a conflict of interests.

This was on the mind of some members of the Senate Judiciary Committee during Pryor’s confirmation hearings. As it turns out, documents disclosed after Pryor’s Senate confirmation hearing show that Pryor may not have been honest with the committee about his knowledge of and personal participation in RAGA fundraising from Alabama companies, companies doing business in Alabama, and tobacco companies while Pryor was attorney general there.

He testified, for example, that he was unaware whether RAGA solicited tobacco companies. But the disclosed documents reportedly show that Pryor himself was assigned to solicit two large tobacco companies that ultimately donated $25,000 apiece.

Can you imagine what a world run by a handful of William Pryor’s would be like? Look closely at the list of appointees Bush wants to sit on the federal judiciary and alert you Senators.



--Reach Joel Wendland at jwendland@politicalaffairs.net.