President Biden and every official in his administration has made clear that race, gender, and sexual identity will be the top concern when making any decisions or policy proposals. It’s paying off for liberal groups already.
Bloomberg Law reported Wednesday that Biden’s White House won’t use the American Bar Association to vet potential judicial appointments until after nominations are made official, a break from the practice of Biden’s old boss, former President Barack Obama, and other Democrats before him.
Christopher Kang, a liberal activist and co-founder of the liberal judicial advocacy group Demand Justice, told Bloomberg that the ABA is “well-intentioned” but called it “yet another corporate lawyer-dominated gatekeeper in the judicial selection process.” He said it “must not be allowed to act as an obstacle to diversifying the bench.”
In other words, the foremost consideration when making a judicial appointment should be diversity. Second, and a distant second at that, is merit.
Biden’s team has already said it would act in such a manner to do this. Before he was even inaugurated, a senior adviser wrote a letter to Senate Democrats asking that they offer input on “diverse” potential judicial nominees, specifically calling for “individuals whose legal experiences have been historically underrepresented.”
That was made to sound like Biden was simply looking for a range of nominees who come from different educational and professional backgrounds, but that’s never how Democrats work, especially not this White House.
Curiously, just 20 years ago, liberals were boiling in outrage when then-President George W. Bush cut the ABA out of the process, deeming it a partisan Democratic organization. Times do change.
