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Senate Advances Judicial Pick Hostile To Voting Rights For Black People

Thomas Farr, Trump’s nominee to a federal court seat, defended North Carolina’s voter suppression law and racially discriminatory gerrymandering.

By Jennifer Bendery

WASHINGTON ― Despite protests by civ­il rights lead­ers, the Senate vot­ed Thursday to advance a judi­cial nom­i­nee who helped draft North Carolina’s vot­er sup­pres­sion law, defend­ed racial­ly dis­crim­i­na­to­ry ger­ry­man­der­ing and may have lied to the Senate about his role in dis­en­fran­chis­ing black vot­ers when he worked for the late Sen. Jesse Helms.

The Judiciary Committee vot­ed along par­ty lines to move for­ward with the nom­i­na­tion of Thomas Farr, President Donald Trump’s choice for a life­time seat on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. Republicans who vot­ed for Farr include Sens. Chuck Grassley (Iowa), Orrin Hatch (Utah), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), John Cornyn (Texas) Mike Lee (Utah), Ted Cruz (Texas), Ben Sasse (Neb.), Jeff Flake (Ariz.), Mike Crapo (Idaho), Thom Tillis (N.C.) and John Kennedy (La.).

Farr was vot­ed out of the com­mit­tee on a par­ty-line vote last year, but his nom­i­na­tion expired at the end of 2017. Trump renom­i­nat­ed him this month, and the com­mit­tee vot­ed again Thursday with­out any changed votes.

A North Carolina lawyer, Farr helped draft the state’s sweep­ing vot­er ID law passed in 2013 ― one of the most restric­tive in the coun­try. When civ­il rights groups chal­lenged the law, Farr rep­re­sent­ed the state before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in 2016, argu­ing it “was not a nefar­i­ous thing.” The court struck down the law lat­er that year, rul­ing that it “tar­get­ed African Americans with almost sur­gi­cal precision.”

Farr defend­ed state redis­trict­ing maps that were reject­ed by fed­er­al courts for being racial­ly dis­crim­i­na­to­ry, and when civ­il rights groups sued North Carolina in 2015 for vio­lat­ing the National Voter Registration Act, Farr rep­re­sent­ed the state in court again. He lost.

Back in 1990, Farr was a lawyer for Republican Sen. Jesse Helms’ cam­paign, which, that year, sent more than 100,000 post­cards to black vot­ers in North Carolina with incor­rect infor­ma­tion about vot­er qual­i­fi­ca­tions and warned that vot­er fraud was pun­ish­able by up to five years in prison. The Justice Department sued and settled.

Farr denied to the Judiciary Committee last fall that he played any role in that effort, but had to clar­i­fy lat­er that he knew some things about it ― a shift that raised ques­tions about whether he had lied to the Senate about his role in intim­i­dat­ing black voters.

Prominent black lead­ers have denounced Farr’s nom­i­na­tion and say he’s one of the worst fed­er­al court picks they’ve ever seen. Rev. Dr. William Barber II, the pres­i­dent emer­i­tas of the NAACP’s North Carolina chap­ter, said Farr is tied to “the worst ele­ments of white suprema­cy” in a Wednesday let­ter to com­mit­tee lead­ers. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus set up shop out­side Farr’s hear­ing on Thursday to urge sen­a­tors to vote no.

Black law­mak­ers have been vocal oppo­nents of Farr for months, in part because of his record but also because his judi­cial dis­trict is 30 per­cent black and has nev­er had a black fed­er­al dis­trict court judge since its found­ing in 1719.

Farr’s nom­i­na­tion is “racial­ly insen­si­tive,” Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D‑N.C.) told reporters.

Sen. Tillis, who is ush­er­ing Farr through the con­fir­ma­tion process, said his crit­ics are attack­ing his char­ac­ter because they dis­agree with him politically.

“The far-left has tak­en this one step fur­ther by wag­ing a despi­ca­ble effort to dam­age Mr. Farr’s rep­u­ta­tion and false­ly impugn his char­ac­ter,” Tillis said in a Wednesday op-ed.

Farr’s nom­i­na­tion now heads to the full Senate, where he awaits a con­fir­ma­tion vote. It’s up to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R‑Ky.) when to sched­ule that vote.

Farr was one of a whop­ping 17 judi­cial nom­i­nees vot­ed out of the com­mit­tee Thursday, many of whom had been vot­ed out of the com­mit­tee last year but had to be renom­i­nat­ed in 2018 after the last leg­isla­tive ses­sion expired.

Progressive groups used the hash­tag #mon­ster­markup on Twitter through­out the day to com­plain about Republicans pack­ing too many court picks into one hear­ing and not vet­ting them sufficiently.

Some of the oth­er nom­i­na­tions vot­ed out of com­mit­tee include dis­trict court nom­i­nees Charles Goodwin and Holly Teeter, both rat­ed “not qual­i­fied” to be judges by the American Bar Association; cir­cuit court nom­i­nee Kyle Duncan, who authored legal briefs oppos­ing same-sex mar­riage and argued in sup­port of Texas’ uncon­sti­tu­tion­al restric­tions on abor­tion; and dis­trict court nom­i­nee Mark Norris, who led an effort to ban com­mu­ni­ties from remov­ing mon­u­ments to Confederate lead­ers and set up a web­site with images of refugees along­side pic­tures of Islamic State ter­ror­ists. https://​www​.huff​in​g​ton​post​.com/​e​n​t​r​y​/​t​h​o​m​a​s​-​f​a​r​r​-​t​r​u​m​p​-​j​u​d​i​c​i​a​l​-​n​o​m​i​n​e​e​_​u​s​_​5​a​5​f​a​1​9​2​e​4​b​0​4​6​f​0​8​1​1​c​7​f​e​9​?​n​c​i​d​=​i​n​b​l​n​k​u​s​h​p​m​g​0​0​0​0​0​009