[W]ASHINGTON — Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee released a report Thursday arguing that Republicans have led an effort to reshape the federal court system.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., joined the committee’s other nine Democrats in raising concerns about the report’s findings.
“Judges serve for life and it’s critically important our courts remain committed to equal justice where all Americans receive a fair and impartial hearing,” the senators said in a statement.
The report charges that Republicans used a strategy of blocking President Barack Obama’s nominees to hold seats open so a Republican president could fill them.
As a result, when President Donald Trump took office, he immediately had 112 judicial vacancies to fill. Obama had less than half that number to fill on his first day in office, with 53.
The report also asserts that Republican leadership is taking an approach that will change the court system for decades. A high number of them are young, in their 40s — meaning that they will be on the bench for decades.
The Democrats also say nominees have been selected with the influence of political groups, and that Trump’s picks for the courts represent a “lack of diversity.”
Democrats on the committee said that Republicans are ushering nominees through at “record-breaking speed.”
The Democrats accuse Trump of diminishing the Senate’s ability to vet nominees. They argue that Republicans are not honoring a system that allows home-state senators to block nominees they do not approve of.
They say the process of vetting nominees for appeals court vacancies has been hindered because the panel had hearings with two nominees at time, which they argue made it difficult to fully question each candidate.
Taylor Foy, a spokesperson for Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said in an email that the report “isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.”
The review did not bring up the elimination of the Senate’s filibuster rule in 2013 under Democratic leadership, which allowed the chamber to advance Obama’s nominees by a simple majority, instead of requiring at least 60 votes.
“But we do appreciate the Democrats acknowledging the Majority’s record-breaking success in prioritizing and confirming highly qualified judges who understand their role is not to legislate from the bench,” he said.
The report came out as tensions have been particularly high around a procedure that allows senators to show their disapproval of a nominee for the courts in their home state by not returning a blue slip.
Grassley has defended his approach to blue slips. In a speech on the Senate floor, he argued that the practice is a “courtesy.”
Over the last century, only two chairs of the committee have taken a strict approach to the process, he said. Leahy, he argued, adopted the policy as a way to block President George W. Bush’s nominees.
Grassley said when Leahy was chair, it was up to him to decide to require consent from both senators from the state for each nominee. Now that Grassley is chair, it is his prerogative to have a different approach, he said.
“I won’t allow the blue slip to be abused in this way,” Grassley said. “The blue slip is meant to encourage consultation between the White House and home-state senators. It’s not a way for senators to have veto power over nominees for political and ideological reasons.”
Leahy, however, argues the blue slip practice is a longtime tradition in the Senate.
“In many ways, traditions like the blue slip have been central to what makes the Senate the Senate,” Leahy said on the Senate floor this week. “All of us, whether Democrat or Republican, we should care about good-faith consultation when it comes to the nominees from our own states.”
Leahy spoke a few days before the Senate confirmed a federal judge in Wisconsin despite objections from Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis.
That the nomination was allowed to proceed, Leahy said, “makes a mockery” of a “time-tested process.”
He asserted that Grassley’s approach is part of a “steady erosion” of norms in the chamber.
Leahy said that when he was chair of the committee, Senate Republicans sent a letter requesting that he uphold the practice of requiring consent from both state senators for nominees.
Leahy previously has said he was under the impression that Grassley would take the same approach to blue slips as he did during his tenure at the helm of the committee.
