[NOW Action List] Take Action on Janice Brown: Click to Call

Support NOW's Work  |	June 2, 2005	|  Tell a Friend

Action Needed Background All NOW Actions More on Judicial Nominees		Please call your Senators and urge them to oppose the judicial nomination of Janice Brown to the D.C. Circuit! Action Needed: Judge Brown has a history of hostility toward affirmative action, reproductive rights, civil rights, disability rights and government benefit programs like Social Security. She has been described as more conservative than Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Don't let Bush put another extremist judge on one of the most influential courts in the land! Please call your Senators and urge them to oppose the judicial nomination of Janice Brown. Background: Judge Janice Rogers Brown is a member of the California Supreme Court. Her court decisions reflect her desire to limit employment rights, abortion rights and corporate liability, and they display her outright opposition to affirmative action and government programs. Brown was frequently the lone dissenter, even among the five Republicans on that court. She was alone in arguing for the repeal of a rape conviction on the grounds that the 17-year-old victim might have given "mixed messages," and she was alone in saying that a jury should not have been permitted to hear evidence of Battered Women's Syndrome. Her court opinions also reflect her distaste for civil rights protections. In the 1999 case Aguilar v. Avis Rent A Car Systems, Inc., a California trial court found that the employer had used racial slurs toward Latino employees thus creating a hostile work environment. Brown dissented from this majority opinion, arguing that the First Amendment protects the use of racial slurs in the workplace, even when it involves illegal race discrimination. Her opinion went so far as to suggest that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination, violates the First Amendment and is unconstitutional. In her decisions Judge Brown has demonstrated her hostility to abortion rights. In a recent case, Catholic Charities of Sacramento v. Superior Court of Sacramento County, Brown was the sole dissent in a case which found that Catholic Charities was violating a state contraceptive prescriptive equity statute. She stated that if employees felt that they were discriminated against they were free to move to "more congenial employment." In American Academy of Pediatrics v. Daniel E. Lundgren, she did so by dismissing a minor's right to privacy. The majority of the California Supreme Court struck down a law requiring minors to obtain a parent's permission to obtain an abortion. The court held that California's constitution, unlike the federal Constitution, explicitly protected citizens' privacy, rendering the provision unconstitutional. In Brown's dissent, she suggested that the federal Constitution restricts states from recognizing a right to privacy in their constitutions and that the majority's opinion allowed courts to "topple every cultural icon, to dismiss all societal values, and to become final arbiters of traditional morality." Since then, Brown has listed her dissent in this case as one of her ten most significant opinions. Judge Brown's decisions also reflect her opposition to affirmative action measures. She is infamous for her decision in Hi-Voltage Wire Works Inc. v. City of San Jose, 24 Cal. 4th 537 (2000), which upheld California's voter-approved initiative, Proposition 209, banning preferential treatment for women and minorities in public contracts, hiring and college admissions. Brown's 18-page opinion attacked not only the facts of the case but also affirmative action in general, making her very popular among the Republican Right. Brown's extremist views are apparent in her view of the New Deal, which she has described as "the triumph of our own socialist revolution" and has said that it "cut away the very ground on which the constitution rests." On the subject of Social Security, Brown remarked that "Today's senior citizens blithely cannibalize their grandchildren." Brown's opinions frequently reflect her extremist ideology and ignore established constitutional law. The American Bar Association has given her a mixed "qualified/not qualified" rating for this position. Virtually every major civil rights organization opposes Brown. If confirmed, Judge Brown will serve on the District of Columbia Court of Appeals-a court whose power is second only to that of the Supreme Court. Because it oversees the actions of crucial federal government agencies including the National Labor Relations Board, the Federal Communications Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and many more, the DC Circuit has been called a "training ground" for Supreme Court justices. Because of the possible ramifications of nominations to this court, each nominee to the District of Columbia court should be closely scrutinized. Again, please don't let Bush put another extremist judge on one of the most influential courts in the land! Please call your Senators and urge them to oppose the judicial nomination of Janice Brown.
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