Sen. Harry Reid to Oppose John Roberts

By Jeralyn, Section John Roberts
Posted on Tue Sep 20, 2005 at 10:36:29 AM EST
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Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid says he will vote against the nomination of John Roberts for Chief Justice of the United States.

Reid scheduled a speech on the Senate floor for mid-afternoon, at which he was expected to make his announcement public.

I suspect several other Democrats will also vote against Roberts. He didn't answer their direct questions about his views on abortion, civil rights and other important issues, sticking to his script about respecting precedent. His hearings were more like a law school class at which he was lecturer-in-chief.

As big as the abortion issue is to many folks, civil liberties in the broader context (Patriot Act, increased governmental snooping, etc.) the death penalty and criminal justice are my primary areas of concern. Roberts just about got a pass on all those issues from the Senators, and I'm not happy about that. Still, Roberts will be confirmed, and the real fight is yet to come - over Justice O'Connor's replacement. I'm holding my big guns for that one.

Update: From Sen. Reid's statement (received by e-mail):

“I was very impressed with Judge Roberts when I first met him, soon after he was nominated. But several factors caused me to reassess my initial view.

“Most notably, I was disturbed by the memos that surfaced from Judge Roberts’s years of service in the Reagan Administration. These memos raise serious questions about the nominee’s approach to civil rights.

“It is now clear that as a young lawyer, John Roberts played a significant role in shaping and advancing the Republican agenda to roll back civil rights protections. He wrote memos opposing legislative and judicial efforts to remedy race and gender discrimination. He urged his superiors to oppose Senator Kennedy’s 1982 bill to strengthen the Voting Rights Act and worked against affirmative action programs. He derided the concept of comparable worth and questioned whether women actually suffer discrimination in the workplace.

“No one suggests that John Roberts was motivated by bigotry or animosity towards minorities or women. But these memos lead one to question whether he truly appreciated the history of the civil rights struggle. He wrote about discrimination as an abstract concept, not as a flesh and blood reality for countless of his fellow citizens. The memos raised a real question for me whether their author would breathe life into the Equal Protection Clause and the landmark civil rights statutes that come before the Supreme Court repeatedly.

“Nonetheless