Sunday,
Nov. 24, 2013
WASHINGTON —
Georgia
Democrats and civil rights groups are trying to scuttle a deal among the
state’s two Republican senators and the White House to fill five long-running
federal judicial vacancies, because only one candidate is a minority.
U.S.
Rep. John Lewis said the issue is important enough to take to President Barack
Obama himself.
The
Atlanta Democrat and civil rights icon said he will use “all means” of
leverage. “If I get a chance to speak with (Obama), I will,” he said.
The
nominee standoff has dragged on for years, and the federal court system has
declared four of Georgia’s vacancies “judicial emergencies” because of the
length of the vacancy and the court workload.
The
dispute does not directly relate to Senate Democrats’ decision last week to
change filibuster rules so they could confirm most Obama nominees more easily,
but the political fallout from that “nuclear option” also could imperil the
deal.
Two
vacancies on the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit Court of Appeals — which hears
cases from Georgia, Alabama and Florida — would be filled by Atlanta attorney
Jill Pryor and U.S. District Court Chief Judge Julie Carnes.
Pryor,
50, is a partner at Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore and a past president of the
Georgia Association for Women Lawyers. A former prosecutor, Carnes, 62, was
nominated to her post by President George H.W. Bush in 1991.
Carnes’
move would create a total of four vacancies on the Northern District of Georgia
bench, to be filled by Atlanta personal injury attorney Leigh Martin May,
DeKalb County State Court Judge Eleanor Ross, Georgia Court of Appeals Judge
Michael Boggs and Atlanta lawyer Mark Cohen.
Pryor
has been formally nominated by the White House, while the rest are still going
through the vetting process and have not been announced. Only Ross, who is
African-American, is a minority.
Months
of negotiations produced the set of potential nominees, but when the names were
published in September in the Daily Report, a Fulton County legal publication,
Georgia’s five Democratic Congressmen were up in arms. The White House had
asked them to help come up with candidates for vacancies at the start of
Obama’s first term, but they were shut out of the deal with the senators.
The
House members met with outgoing White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler last month
to air their grievances.
“I
think they heard our concerns,” said U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson, a DeKalb County
Democrat. “There will be a new counsel (expected next year) and presumably
there could be a fresh look at the nomination process.”
Meanwhile,
members of Atlanta’s civil rights community became increasingly vocal in their
insistence that the federal courts should reflect the populations they oversee.
The
African-American population in Georgia is 31 percent, more than double the
national average of 13 percent. Blacks comprise 26.5 percent of Alabama’s
population and almost 17 percent of Florida’s.
The
11th Circuit, headquartered in Atlanta, is allotted a dozen judges and has only
one African-American judge, Charles Wilson, and one Cuban-born judge, Adalberto
Jordan, of Miami.
The
U.S. District Court bench in Atlanta has only one African-American, Steve
Jones, sitting as a full-time judge. That court is allotted 11 judges.
The
federal court headquartered in Macon has only had one African-American judge in
its history. The bench in Savannah has had none.
Stephen
Bright, president of the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, bemoaned
the Obama administration’s failure to put more African-American judges on the
federal bench in Georgia.
“The
lack of racial diversity in the administration’s appointments is absolutely
inexcusable,” Bright said. “The courts have no credibility or legitimacy if
they do not look like the people whose cases they are deciding.”
The
U.S. Courts, which track judicial vacancies, recently noted that U.S. District
Judge Louis Sands in Macon, who is black, will become a senior judge no longer
serving full-time starting in April.
This
means blacks will then fill only one the 18 federal judgeships in Georgia, said
Leslie Proll, director of the Washington office of the NAACP Legal Defense and
Education Fund. “It’s a situation that desperately needs attention,” she said.
“It makes an already dire situation … even more urgent.”
The
White House had placed a premium on finding African-American women for the
posts, and Obama nominated U.S. Magistrate Judge Linda Walker and federal
public defender Natasha Perdew Silas for a pair of district court openings at
the beginning of 2011.
Georgia
Republican Sens. Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss were fine with Walker but
would not approve Silas. Home-state senators’ approval is required for nominees
to advance through the Judiciary Committee, by the custom of committee chairman
Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. The White House said the duo was a package, so neither
went through.
In
the latest group, Pryor and May are the Democrat-backed candidates. Both are
white.
State
Sen. Vincent Fort, D-Atlanta, said Boggs’ and Cohen’s records are particularly
troubling. When he was in the state Senate, Boggs voted to keep the old Georgia
state flag, which included a Confederate flag.
Cohen
defended Georgia’s Voter ID law, which civil rights groups opposed because of
the impact they said it would have on minorities.
“This
would just make an already bad court from the civil rights perspective even
worse,” Fort said.
Josh
Belinfante, former executive counsel to Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue, defended
the slate as “a very good compromise.”
The
flag vote did not cause a stir when Boggs was elevated to the state Court of
Appeals. Boggs was instrumental in last year’s passage of criminal-justice
reform legislation, which allowed Georgia to push more nonviolent offenders
away from prison. It also gave judges more discretion to depart from some of
the state’s strict mandatory minimum-sentencing laws.
Cohen,
who once served as Gov. Zell Miller’s chief of staff, defended Georgia’s voter
ID law at the request of Democratic Attorney General Thurbert Baker.
“It’s
a shame that their opponents have not focused on their intellect and judicial
temperament but instead on other matters,” Belinfante said.
Isakson,
Chambliss and the White House declined to comment until nominations are
official. Foes are vowing to keep the pressure on to thwart the expected picks.
“This
is a situation where Congressman Lewis in particular has to step up and speak
to the president and make his voice known on this,” Fort said. “You can’t rely
on hope. Hope is not a plan.”
Lewis
agreed.
“I
just think we can do better,” said Georgia’s longest-serving member of
Congress. “The makeup of the judiciary should reflect all of the people.”
