[News-releases] NOW Blasts Bush's Renomination of Defeated Judges,Vows to Defeat Pickering, Owen and Others Again

NOW Press Office
202-628-8669 Rebecca Farmer, x 116
202-785-8576 (fax) 

NOW Blasts Bush's Renomination of Defeated Judges, Vows to Defeat Pickering,
Owen and Others Again

January 8, 2003

"It has only been a short time since the egregious statements of Sen. Trent
Lott and Rep. Cass Ballenger, and already the White House has abandoned its
brief embrace of civil rights by renominating Charles Pickering, Sr. to the
Court of Appeals," said National Organization for Women (NOW) President Kim
Gandy.

"I challenge the Republican senators who were concerned about Lott's shout-out
to racist policies of the past to oppose every nominee with a record of
intolerance--and to do it with the same conviction they expressed about their
former Majority Leader's statements. The Republican Party needs to move past
the racial politics of the old South and would do well to identify itself with
something other that the good ole' boys club," said Gandy.

"Pickering has long record of opposing civil rights and civil liberties, while
Priscilla Owen, also renominated to the same court, is a staunch opponent of
women's reproductive rights," Gandy said. "But it's not just a matter of
personal beliefs?both Pickering and Owen have demonstrated significant
judicial
activism in their rulings as lower court judges." Women's rights and civil
rights groups waged a large-scale campaign against Pickering in the last
Congress and were instrumental in the Senate's rejection of his nomination.
Reproductive rights groups also generated strong opposition to Owen. Bush has
also renominated a number of judges whose positions and opinions are so
controversial that their nominations died in the last Congress.

"The women's rights and civil rights communities will fight this political
deja-vu with the same determination we did last year," Gandy said. "And if
Bush
thinks that in battling these two controversial judges?Pickering and
Owen?we'll
be too distracted to fight the other bad nominees, he's dead wrong." 

###