3 Texans advance for federal judicial posts
— The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday approved three Texas nominees for lifetime judicial appointments.
Andy Oldham, general counsel to Gov. Greg Abbott who had earlier drawn sharp criticism from Democrats, was approved along party lines 11-10 for a post on the powerful 5th Circuit Court of Appeals that sits in New Orleans.
Beaumont attorney Michael Truncale also was approved along party lines for an East Texas district judgeship, while Austin lawyer Alan Albright proved to be noncontroversial and was approved by voice vote, without dissent, for a district judgeship in Waco.
U.S. Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, are both members of the panel and voted for the nominees, although Cruz was not present, and his votes supporting the candidates were recorded by proxy.
Cruz was in Texas on Thursday attending Abbott’s last day of roundtable discussions to combat gun violence after the deaths of 10 students and teachers at Santa Fe High School.
“I am pleased that the Senate Judiciary Committee has favorably reported out three more nominees for the federal bench in Texas,” Cruz said in a statement. “These nominees represent the best of our state’s legal community, and I urge their swift confirmation by the full Senate.”
“Texas deserves nominees who will interpret the law faithfully, and these accomplished individuals are no exception,” Cornyn said in a statement. “I am grateful that our colleagues on the committee voted to advance these highly qualified nominees, and I look forward to confirming them in the full Senate soon.”
The votes and anticipated approval by the GOP-controlled Senate solidifies the Trump administration’s push to put its stamp on the judiciary with conservatives and also young appointees who can serve for many years.
Last year the Senate approved two conservative Texans for positions on the appellate court that covers cases in Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana: former Republican Texas Supreme Court Justice Don Willett and former Texas Solicitor General James Ho.
Democrats had taken issue in an earlier committee hearing with Oldham’s refusal to endorse the landmark civil rights Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education that outlawed separate education for African-Americans. He had said in his confirmation hearing he would not opine on Supreme Court decisions but would follow the law.
“We’ll have one nominee up here who won’t even answer if Brown v. Board of Education was rightly decided,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. “Good Lord.”
“I’ll be darned if I’m going to have somebody stand up and say, ‘I can’t tell you if I agree with a Supreme Court decision that is the law of the land,’” Leahy said.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, tried to defuse the controversy by saying in the May 17th session that Oldham had said in a written response to the committee that the Brown decision was “rightly celebrated” for being one of the first “pillars of the civil rights movement.”
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of more than 200 civil rights groups, opposed Oldham and said in a statement that he was “a conservative ideologue who would not be a fair-minded jurist.”
Senate Democrats also criticized Oldham for having called then-President Obama “an American imposter” in a speech.