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."

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