Federal judge nominee asked about men’s club
Tulsa attorney John O’Connor, who is being considered for a federal judgeship that would span all of Oklahoma, faced few questions during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday.
O’Connor was nominated by President Donald Trump in April to be a roving federal judge covering Oklahoma’s three judicial districts, which are based in Oklahoma City, Tulsa and Muskogee. It’s expected he would spend a majority of his time in Tulsa and Muskogee.
Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, asked about O’Connor’s membership in the Brother House of Tulsa, a decades-old men’s club. Durbin said the group discriminates against women and read aloud from a Tulsa newspaper article that stated Brother House’s mission was to “develop male spirituality and fatherhood in response to male bashing from the opposite sex.”
O’Connor said the group was founded by a friend but he attended only two or three meetings “25 or 30 years ago” and never attended the group’s retreats. O’Connor agreed to provide the committee with more information about the Brother House of Tulsa.
The 63-year-old corporate lawyer has never been a judge or clerked for a judge, according to a questionnaire he answered for the Judiciary Committee. A small minority, 20 percent, of his legal work has been done in federal court, he wrote.
The American Bar Association, which rates whether judicial nominees are qualified, has not yet issued its rating for O’Connor. Sen. Kamala Harris, a California Democrat, said the Judiciary Committee should not have moved forward with O’Connor’s nomination before the ABA releas edits rating.
Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law professor and expert on judicial nominations, said O’Connor has little to worry about after Wednesday’s hearing.
“I thought it was pretty smooth,” Tobias said. “He has the right demeanor, seemed calm and looked the part.”
The committee did not vote on O’Connor’s nomination; it will likely do so in the coming weeks. He will need a majority of votes in the Senate Judiciary Committee and the full Senate— both of which are narrowly controlled by Republicans— before taking office.
GOP donor and advocate
O’Connor is a significant donor to Oklahoma Republicans. Last year, he hosted fundraisers for congressional candidate Kevin Hern, lieutenant governor candidate Matt Pinnell, insurance commissioner candidate Glen Mulready and Attorney General Mike Hunter.
He has made personal donations to them and other Republicans, most recently giving Mulready’s campaign $1,350 in April and Hunter’s campaign $1,250 in December. He donated $2,000 to U.S. Sen. James Lankford in 2014 and $500 to U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe in 2013. He has donated $8,840 to Oklahoma Republicans in the past five years, according to state and federal campaign finance reports.
In 2011 and 2014, O’Connor hosted fundraisers for Insurance Commissioner John Doak. O’Connor was later hired as an outside attorney for Doak and considers his work for the insurance commissioner to be some of the most important legal work of his career, according to the Judiciary Committee questionnaire. It primarily involves litigation against failed insurance companies.
In 2009, O’Connor testified at the Oklahoma Capitol, urging the state’s Adoption Review Task Force to pass legislation that would allow foster parents to return an adopted child to the Department of Human Services if the child became violent or suffered from a severe mental illness, according to The Oklahoman’s archives. The idea never became law.
Fourteen years earlier, O’Connor had represented an adoptive couple who lost the opportunity to adopt “Baby J,” a part-Native American child, after the Muscogee (Creek) Nation asserted its rights under the Indian Child Welfare Act, a 1978 law that allows tribes to intervene in the adoption of Native American children to non-native parents.
In 1989, O’Connor spoke at an anti-abortion rally in Tulsa after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear an abortion case, Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, according to Tulsa World archives. O’Connor predicted the high court would chip away at the Roe v. Wade ruling that had legalized abortion.
The court decided the Webster case later that year, upholding a Missouri law that restricted the use of taxpayer funds for abortion. While many judicial nominees are approached by their U.S. senators or the White House, O’Connor instead applied, sending a letter to Oklahoma’s senators in September to express his interest. He then sent another letter and his resume to them that October.
“He brings a deep ethical background, a deep personal faith and over 30 years of experience in the field of law,” said Lankford, an Oklahoma City Republican who introduced O’Connor before Wednesday’s hearing.