The New York Times (4/21, Lewis) reports that as the Senate "moves ever closer to a partisan showdown" on President Bush's judicial nominees, the Judiciary Committee "is expected to vote along party lines" today to approve "at least two nominees certain to attract a Democratic filibuster in the full Senate. That is fine with those Republicans and their conservative allies who are pressing for a change in Senate rules to prevent filibusters on judicial nominees, an action that could plunge the chamber into an angry deadlock. The reason the champions of a rule change are pleased is that they believe the two candidates will serve as sympathetic figures and rallying points for their case." Both Janice Rogers Brown of California and Priscilla Owen of Texas "are women and state supreme court judges," and Brown "is an outspoken, conservative African-American." Democrats mounted filibusters against both of them during the President's first term. The Frontrunner April 21, 2005 Thursday

Judge Janice Rodgers Brown = Super Freaky
A report from the People for the American Way and the NAACP reveals Justice Brown's true record. Brown on seniors: "Today's senior citizens blithely cannibalize their grandchildren because they have a right to get as much "free" stuff as the political system will permit them to extract." Brown on age discrimination: "Discrimination based on age does not mark its victim with a stigma of inferiority and second class citizenship...it is the unavoidable consequence of that universal leveler: time." Brown on New Deal programs, such as Social Security: "The New Deal...inoculated the federal Constitution with a kind of underground collectivist mentality. The Constitution itself was transmuted into a significantly different document...1937...marks the triumph of our own socialist revolution." Brown on government: "Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline in the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible." Brown, ignoring Supreme Court precedent, argues that racially discriminatory speech in the workplace is protected by the First Amendment. She has also denounced the Supreme Courts landmark ruling U.S. v. Carolene Products; a view which, if adopted "would signal the death-knell for a vast range of health labor, and environmental standards it enacted during the last century." The NYT characterized her record as a "war on mainstream legal values that most Americans hold dear." [more]

As a California Supreme Court Justice Brown was the only member of the court to:

• find that the state Fair Employment and Housing Commission “did not have the authority to award damages to housing discrimination victims”;
• conclude that a disability discrimination victim “was not entitled to raise past instances of discrimination that occurred”;
• try to rule that age discrimination victims “should not have the right to sue under common law – an interpretation that is directly contrary to the will of the California legislature”;
• dissent “in a case involving the sale of cigarettes to minors”;
• argue that her court should “strike down a San Francisco law that provided housing assistance to displaced low-income, elderly, and disabled people”;
• dissent in “two rulings that permitted counties to ban guns or gun sales on fairgrounds and other public property”; and
• conclude (along with other dissenting court members) that “victims who are repeatedly harassed in the workplace must take a back seat to the free speech rights of their harassers.” [more]
• Wade Henderson Calls Rogers Brown and Owen Unfit Ideological Activists [more]