Tell Senator Padilla: Stop Blue Slip Abuse!
Call Script
My name is __________. I am a constituent, and my zip code is _______. I am a member of Indivisible SF.
Has Chairman Durbin forgotten what Republican Senators did in obstructing President Obama’s judicial nominees? They abused blue slips then and are doing the same thing now. Tell Chair Durbin to stop the blue-slip process right now.
We also urge you to propose canceling the Senate August recess in order to confirm more judges, so that we can save our judicial branch from MAGA authoritarians.
Background
Democrats have respected the judicial branch as a means of defending our Constitutional rights and have cherished judicial victories for civil rights, voting rights, and more. Republicans have viewed the courts as yet another means of extending their power by limiting the voting rights of Democratic voters, undermining these hard-won victories and any popular legislation opposed by their wealthy donors. After Republicans seated over a hundred judicial activists on our courts during the last administration, President Biden and the 117th Congress made it their mission to rebalance the courts as quickly as possible. They were able to proceed in confirming President Biden’s nominees, even with a slim Senate majority, until Senator Feinstein’s health kept her away from Congress.
While all the focus has been on Senator Feinstein and her health struggles, there’s another problem hindering the rebalancing of our federal judiciary: abuse of the blue slip process. The blue-slip process has been in use since 1917. The blue slip is a form that home-state senators submit showing their approval for nominees for their state’s slot on federal and district courts. Nominees are selected through negotiations in advance, so blue slips have largely been a given. However, in the 1950s Mississippi Senator James Eastland was the first Senate Judiciary chair to allow a single home-state senator to use the process to block nominees. Eastland used it to block judges sympathetic to school desegregation from being appointed in Southern states.
When Senator Chuck Grassley took the Judiciary Committee gavel in 2015, he wrote an op-ed declaring that “I appreciate the value of the blue-slip process and also intend to honor it.” And then he didn’t. When Democratic Senators opposed nominating Federalist Society judicial activists, Grassley told them blue slips were not vetoes, even though that’s exactly how they had been used by Senators Shelby, Paul, Sessions, Cornyn, Cruz, Roberts, and Moran to block President Obama’s nominees. Senator McConnell encouraged Grassley to ignore blue slips and proceeded to fill the judiciary with radical right-wing nominees, including those who received unanimous “not qualified” rankings from the American Bar Association. By withholding blue slips, McConnell’s Senate kept 105 judicial seats open for Trump to fill.
In spite of that devastating history, the current Judiciary Committee chair, Sen. Dick Durbin, decided to restore the blue-slip process. This unilateral disarmament is particularly problematic when we consider how many of the vacancies are in so-called “red states” with Republican senators. Texas and Florida alone have seven each. (The recent preliminary injunction undoing the FDA approval of the abortion pill mifepristone—now partially reversed—came from a federal court in Texas. That’s one example of what’s at stake.) It would be easy for those senators to blue-slip any of President Biden’s nominees and hold those vacancies open until the next time Republicans have a majority in the Senate.
We want to restore fairness to the courts, but we can’t do that without confirming President Biden’s nominees. Chair Durbin must stop clinging to outdated Senate traditions that prevent Democrats from restoring fairness to the federal courts.
References
Blue slip process Sen. Hyde-Smith used to block federal judge began as an effort to preserve Jim Crow, Mississippi Today, 4/11/2023
US judicial nominee from Mississippi seeks to reverse Sen. Hyde-Smith's opposition , Daily Leader, 4/14/2023
How to Stop a Senator From Blocking a Federal Judge - The New York Times, 2/06/2023
Senate Democrats grapple with pressure to remove GOP's 'blue slip' authority on judges, CNN Politics, 2/2/2023
How Ending the Blue Slip Damaged the Federal Courts Forever, Democracy Docket, 8/25/2021
Senate GOP used “blue slips” to block Obama judicial nominees, but now wants to trash the practice, The Brookings Institute, 5/25/2017
Democrats Still Aren’t Trying Hard Enough to Reclaim the Judiciary, The Nation, 10/22/2022
Senate Democrats should be playing hardball: Cancel August recess to confirm judges, Daily Kos, 4/2/2023
Judicial Vacancy Tracker, Alliance for Justice, last updated 04/27/2023