Trump’s judges showing impact on bench

While conservatives are pleased, liberals worry

WASHINGTON – The men and women President Trump has elevated to federal judgeships across the nation are having an impact on issues from civil rights and campaign spending to public prayer and the death penalty.

Nearly a year after the first of them won Senate confirmation, 15 nominees have made their way to federal appeals courts, representing perhaps Trump’s most significant achievement in his 15 months as president. A dozen more are in the pipeline.

While it’s too soon to detect a definitive trend, Trump’s judges are making their presence felt through the weight of their votes and their rhetoric.

Judge Amul Thapar of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit led the way last May. He helped uphold Ohio’s method of lethal injection as well as a Michigan county’s practice of opening government meetings with Christian prayers.

Judge James Ho, a more recent addition to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, dissented from its refusal to reconsider a challenge to strict campaign contribution limits in Austin that he said violate the First Amendment.

Judge Amy Coney Barrett of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals helped block the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s attempt to stop an employer from transferring Chicago-area employees based on race or ethnicity.

Three judges named by Trump to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals — Ralph Erickson, Steven Grasz and David Stras — joined in its refusal to reconsider a Missouri inmate’s plea to change his method of execution because a rare health condition could make lethal injection too painful. The Supreme Court nevertheless agreed to hear the case next fall.

Trump’s judges have ruled in favor of police, prison guards and a male student seeking the right to face his accus-

er in a sexual-assault case, as well as against a naturalized citizen fighting his loss of citizenship.

The early results please conservatives and concern liberals.

“It usually takes a little while before new judges assert themselves,” said Jonathan Adler, a professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. Trump’s judges, he said, already are showing “signs of independence and thoughtfulness.”

“What we’ve seen so far, I think, is certainly disturbing,” said Elliot Mincberg, a senior fellow at People for the American Way. “These are certainly very right-wing judges.”

Few of their votes have been decisive so far. Most of Trump’s appellate judges serve on courts already dominated by Republican presidents’ choices. Many have yet to make their impact felt. And Trump’s 17 confirmed nominees to federal district courts are operating largely beneath the radar.

Even so, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is making confirmation of Trump’s judges his top priority, telling conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Thursday that “strict constructionists” in their late 40s and 50s are “making a generational change in our country that will be repeated ... down through the years.”

Not always predictable

Some of those strict constructionists have not always been predictable. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch sided with liberals last month in ruling that a law subjecting non-citizens to deportation for crimes of violence is unconstitutionally vague.

One of Trump’s most controversial picks — 6th Circuit Judge John Bush, who had written a blog post under a pseudonym comparing abortion to slavery — ruled in favor of a Mexican woman seeking asylum in the USA. He was backed by two judges appointed by Democratic presidents.

“We and our sister circuits have found a real threat of individual persecution when an applicant presented evidence describing threats of harm,” Bush wrote.

Curt Levey, president of the conservative Committee for Justice, said the decision shows that Trump’s judges are “believers in textualism and the rule of law, rather than ideological conservatives who might decide cases based on their personal political beliefs.”

Judge Kevin Newsom of the 11th Circuit joined a three-judge panel’s unanimous ruling that an Alabama police department’s demotion of a female officer seeking to breastfeed her newborn child was discriminatory. The panel said its holding “will help guarantee women the right to be free from discrimination in the workplace based on gender-specific physiological occurrences.”

Trump has nominated more than 100 federal judges, and the Senate has confirmed 33. Another 12 circuit court nominees and 58 district court nominees are in the pipeline.

Trump inherited more than 100 lower court vacancies, and Senate Democrats in 2013 changed that body’s rules to block Republicans from bottling up nominations. Now in the majority, Republicans have been united on the president’s appeals court choices.

Conservatives have hailed them for their relative youth and their adherence to the Constitution. Four of them clerked for the Supreme Court’s most conservative justice, Clarence Thomas. Nearly all are white; four are women.

But while much has been written about their nominations and confirmations, little attention has been paid thus far to their rulings from the bench. Together, they are pushing back against the liberal tilt of the appellate courts.

Last month’s dissent by Ho did get noticed. His argument against Austin’s $350-per-election limit on individual donations to City Council candidates veered into a diatribe against “big government,” drawing kudos from conservatives and criticism from liberals.

Civil rights groups hope to use the growing number of opinions from Trump’s judges to pressure senators into voting against future nominees.

“It is no surprise that Trump’s judicial nominees, who were selected because of their extreme records, are now issuing rulings demonstrating that they remain extreme as judges,” said Kristine Lucius of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “The Senate must stop rubber-stamping narrowminded nominees to lifetime judicial appointments.”