Four Florida candidates are closer to becoming lifetime federal judges because the Senate Judiciary Committee has become just another extension of Donald Trump’s peremptory power.
Two judicial nominees are particularly bad news.
Their nominations went to the Senate last week uncontested by the Democratic minority, whose members walked out to protest how Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, accelerated a vote on Trump’s most controversial and undeserving choice, Emil Bove III, to join the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
“This lacks decency,” shouted Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., when Grassley called for a roll call vote before all of the minority Democrats could object to Bove.
With Democrats gone, the Republicans dutifully approved him and nine others, including the two undeserving Florida judges, Ed Artau and Jordan Pratt.
Why they are unfit
At the Fourth District Court of Appeal in West Palm Beach, Artau wrote a concurring opinion that conspicuously flattered Trump at a time when Artau was lobbying for his eventual appointment to a federal judgeship in Miami. The timing alone raises obvious ethical questions.
Pratt, now a nominee for a Florida Middle District vacancy, wrote the opinion in May in which the Fifth District Court of Appeal at Daytona Beach overturned the Florida law enabling minors to obtain a judge’s permission for an abortion rather than seek it from her parents.
Pratt invoked a far-fetched legal theory that the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gives parents an inherent right to be informed and to consent.
The Alliance for Justice, a liberal coalition of more than 135 organizations, opposes Pratt for “ideological extremism” and a “rigid worldview that prioritizes religious privilege, diminishes civil rights and threatens public safety.”
Artau’s case stands out, however, for what Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., called his “less measured approach” to Trump’s lawsuit against individual members of the Pulitzer Prize Board for refusing to retract awards to the Washington Post and New York Times.
Cause for a recusal
At a recent hearing, Durbin, the committee’s ranking Democrat, told Artau: “You essentially parroted the litigant Trump’s talking points” and asked why he didn’t recuse himself from the case.
Artau insisted his recusal wasn’t required and claimed he didn’t know Trump was considering him when he wrote his concurring opinion. He did admit speaking to Sen. Rick Scott about the vacancy.
Nonetheless, the opinion read like a shoutout to Trump: “Appoint me!”
It went beyond the only question before the court — whether Trump could sue non-Floridian board members in Florida courts — to say that Trump should win the suit.
It quoted Trump’s claim that it was all “fake news,” a “phony witch hunt” and “a big hoax.” The rest of the 12 pages — six times as long as the main opinion — was pro-Trump, too.
A gender pronoun case
Artau also wrote the majority opinion in a case that disqualified a trial judge from a child custody case because the judge used the child’s preferred gender pronouns against the father’s wishes.
Artau, expressing disdain for gender transition, said the judge’s remarks were “antagonistic.” Judge Melanie May, dissenting, said that “the trial judge simply attempted to relate to the child on the child’s terms … this was completely appropriate,” and that the judge did not prejudge the case.
The two other Florida nominees whom senators briefly questioned last month— as if all their confirmations were assured — are Kyle Dudek, a U.S. magistrate, and Anne-Leigh Gaylord Moe, a judge of Florida’s Second District Court of Appeal.
The Democrats didn’t appear to have any serious concerns about them and the Republicans barely bothered to question any of them.
The Bove nomination dominated the nearly four-hour June 16 hearing.
Bove, one of Trump’s former personal lawyers, is the principal associate deputy attorney general who saw to mass Justice Department firings and who orchestrated the dismissal of bribery charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams in a way that suggested they might be revived, should he not become a Trump ally in deporting immigrants.
A federal judge dismissed the charges with prejudice, meaning that they couldn’t be held over Adams’ head.
An ‘intolerable’ pick
More than 900 former Justice Department lawyers wrote to senators opposing his confirmation, which they said would be “intolerable.”
What happens next will be a test for the Senate.
Durbin said Grassley violated two Senate rules regarding quorums and ending debate. If only for its reputation — aside from the damage to the courts — the Senate should return all the nominations to the committee for proper debate.
With the Republicans in control, and Florida Sens. Scott and Ashley Moody strongly backing Artau and the others, it’s unlikely that the Senate will respect its constitutional duty.
Nonetheless, it bears remembering that in the Constitution, “advice” comes before “consent.”
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.