LIVE from New Orleans: Thinking and uniting across issues to protect our federal judiciary

Hel­lo from Net­roots Nation in New Orleans!

This after­noon, I observed a pan­el called Our Rights, Our Fight: Why Pro­gres­sives are Unit­ing Across Issues to Pro­tect Our Courts.

Mod­er­at­ed by Kei­th Thiri­on, Direc­tor of Out­reach at Alliance for Jus­tice, the five pan­elists were from dif­fer­ent pro­gres­sive orga­ni­za­tions that each have a dif­fer­ent focus, but who are all very active in the fight against Don­ald Trump’s ter­ri­ble judi­cial nom­i­nees at all lev­els of the fed­er­al judiciary.

Thiri­on not­ed that they had planned this pan­el dis­cus­sion before the retire­ment of Supreme Court Jus­tice Kennedy and the sub­se­quent nom­i­na­tion of Brett Kavanaugh, but now the top­ic has even greater urgency.

Hilary Shel­ton is the Wash­ing­ton, D.C. Bureau Direc­tor of the NAACP and Senior Vice Pres­i­dent of Pol­i­cy and Advo­ca­cy for the NAACP nation­al­ly. He said that too often we put a lot of empha­sis on pass­ing leg­is­la­tion, but we for­get that once bills pass it is up to the courts to decide what those laws mean.

So we real­ly need to think about who ends up in the Unit­ed States Sen­ate, since they have to con­firm all judi­cial nom­i­nees, and we need to engage our­selves in the judi­cial process like nev­er before.

Amba­li­ka Williams, who serves Patient Advo­ca­cy Pro­gram Man­ag­er with the Planned Par­ent­hood Action Fund, helps enable peo­ple to be able to advo­cate for them­selves, their health­care, and their free­dom to make repro­duc­tive choices.

“We are in the fight of our lives,” she said. “Our bod­ies will be on the line.”

She not­ed that the major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans do not want Roe v. Wade to be over­turned, and that peo­ple are ener­gized and mobi­liz­ing around the issue of block­ing Kavanaugh­’s nomination.

She also offered the encour­age­ment that we can stop his con­fir­ma­tion, just like we saved the Patient Pro­tec­tion Act from being repealed by Republicans.

Eliz­a­beth Beavers, the Asso­ciate Pol­i­cy Direc­tor for Indi­vis­i­ble, empha­sized the need to be strate­gic and to apply pres­sure in the way the sys­tem is designed to receive it. She encour­aged every­one to talk to their sen­a­tors to let them know that Kavanaugh is unac­cept­able. Beyond that, she said, we also have to take pow­er, and elect a Con­gress that is will­ing to pro­tect and save the Supreme Court.

Ian Wil­hite, the Press Sec­re­tary for Lamb­da Legal in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., also brought his valu­able per­spec­tive to the pan­el dis­cus­sion. Lamb­da Legal uses the law and courts to make LGBTQ peo­ple safer and make the coun­try more fair.

Fed­er­al judges have been rul­ing in their favor in a case against the Trump admin­is­tra­tion for the trans­gen­der ban on mil­i­tary ser­vice that Trump announced over Twit­ter last year. The admin­is­tra­tion keeps appeal­ing, so the case will prob­a­bly end up at the Supreme Court of the Unit­ed States. If Kavanaugh were con­firmed, he would sure­ly side with Trump on this case, said Wilhite.

Karol Alzate Lodono, an Out­reach Asso­ciate for Alliance for Jus­tice, told the audi­ence that the ener­gy is there to win this fight.

“Coali­tions work, through coali­tions we will win,” she said.

After every­one made their open­ing state­ments, Thiri­on remind­ed every­one of Trump’s polit­i­cal lit­mus test for judi­cial nom­i­nees: name­ly, that they would repeal Roe v. Wade and the Patient Pro­tec­tion Act.

Con­sid­er­ing that and what we know about Kavanaugh, Thiri­on asked the pan­elists what is at stake for the com­mu­ni­ties they represent.

Shel­ton quick­ly replied with a list of items: equal oppor­tu­ni­ty, affir­ma­tive action (which he not­ed actu­al­ly ben­e­fits white women more than any­one else, despite most peo­ple’s assump­tions), and labor rights, includ­ing the right to organize.

Free­doms that Amer­i­cans cur­rent­ly enjoy would be in dan­ger for decades, he said, since it is almost impos­si­ble to remove some­one from the Supreme Court and it has­n’t hap­pened in more than a century.

Shel­ton also added that in addi­tion to the lit­mus test that Thiri­on men­tioned, Trump’s list of twen­ty-five peo­ple that he was con­sid­er­ing for the Supreme Court appoint­ment was also vet­ted and ful­ly endorsed by such con­ser­v­a­tive orga­ni­za­tions as the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety and the Her­itage Institute.

Williams described the risk to all women if Kavanaugh is appoint­ed and Roe v. Wade is over­turned. She said there are many states that would like­ly ban abor­tion if that hap­pened, and explained that there are four states that have trig­ger laws out­law­ing abor­tion that would come into effect the moment Roe is struck down.

Thiri­on then not­ed that advo­cates had been suc­cess­ful in get­ting nom­i­na­tions of judges to the low­er courts blocked, and asked what lessons were learned from that which could be used to fight Kavanaugh. Wil­hite assert­ed that there are votes to stop these nom­i­na­tions, but it is tough because there is pres­sure on Con­gress to give def­er­ence to the regime and its nominees.

He said that the past writ­ings and records of rul­ings of nom­i­nees have be very help­ful, since often when they are brought to light there have been prob­lem­at­ic state­ments or deci­sions and sen­a­tors do not want to be on record sup­port­ing those. “We have the respon­si­bil­i­ty to force them to say no and not stand by these nom­i­nees,” Wil­hite said.

Shel­ton addressed the fact that many of the deci­sions that are going to impact our lives are not going to make their way to the Supreme Court but will be ruled on in low­er courts, so it is crit­i­cal that we look at nom­i­na­tions at every level.

Deci­sions that are made at the low­er lev­els and go through appeals are cre­at­ing case law, so it is cru­cial to think about the low­er courts as well as what hap­pens to the Supreme Court fol­low­ing Antho­ny Kennedy’s retirement.

Lodono empha­sized that the pub­lic mat­ters in these fights, and not­ed that peo­ple can weigh in on judi­cial nom­i­nees even if you are not in the juris­dic­tion for which a nom­i­nee would be serv­ing on the bench. Activists can make a dif­fer­ence; nation­wide advo­ca­cy real­ly helped to get the last few odi­ous nom­i­na­tions denied.

When Thiri­on asked what the pan­elists need­ed from peo­ple to help on this issue, all five pan­elists said call­ing, writ­ing, or vis­it­ing your sen­a­tor in per­son to tell them that you oppose Kavanaugh and oth­er nom­i­nees would be helpful.

Pan­elists not­ed that the Sen­ate is on recess next week and sen­a­tors will be at home in the states they rep­re­sent… a per­fect time to reach out to them.

Orga­ni­za­tions like Alliance for Jus­tice have infor­ma­tion, guides, and toolk­its on their web­sites that you can use to pre­pare for con­nect­ing with your senators.

Some of the pan­elists also rec­om­mend­ed writ­ing a let­ter to the edi­tor of your local news­pa­per. Addi­tion­al­ly, every­one agreed that talk­ing to friends and engag­ing as many oth­er peo­ple as pos­si­ble in these efforts is helpful.

A mem­ber of the audi­ence asked what hap­pens next if we are suc­cess­ful defeat­ing Kavanaugh­’s nom­i­na­tion to the Supreme Court, since pre­sum­ably Trump’s next nom­i­nee will be just as bad.

Beavers answered that we need to flip the Sen­ate. “But also, if we block Kavanaugh, there is no rea­son we can’t block oth­ers as well.”

Shel­ton added that, as sad as it is to say, in real­i­ty we are bet­ter to leave that vacan­cy for a while than to fill it with the likes of Kavanaugh.

The over­all tone of the pan­el was sober and seri­ous, empha­siz­ing the need for every­one to get involved, but also hope­ful in that, if a large num­ber of peo­ple do take action, we absolute­ly can suc­ceed in keep­ing Kavanaugh and oth­er extrem­ist right wing judi­cial nom­i­nees off the bench.