The US Senate Just Confirmed a Trump Judicial Nominee Opposed by 2 Dozen LGBT Organizations

Judge Called Landmark LGBT Civil Rights Decision She Opposes ‘Revolutionary’

The U.S. Senate Wednesday afternoon confirmed a conservative judge to the already conservative 6th Circuit U.S Court of Appeals. Judge Joan Larsen, who is opposed by 27 LGBT and civil rights organizations, was nominated by President Donald Trump. She is also on Trump’s list of potential U.S. Supreme Court justice nominees. Larsen serves as a senior judge on Michigan’s Supreme Court.

Larsen, as HuffPost’s Jennifer Bendery reports, “disagreed with the foundation of the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Texas’ sodomy law in the landmark Lawrence v. Texas case. She wrote that it was ‘an understatement in the extreme’ to call the Supreme Court’s decision ‘revolutionary.’ Asked later to explain her article, Larsen said she did not ‘not recall what specifically she found so ‘remarkable.'”

Those 27 organizations sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee “warning that Larsen’s ‘views on civil rights issues are fundamentally at odds with the notion that LGBT people are entitled to equality, liberty, justice and dignity under the law.'”

Wednesday’s vote confirming Larsen to a lifetime appointment was 60-38, including all Republicans and eight Democrats. Among the Democrats are Senators Tom Carper (DE), Joe Donnelly (IN), Heidi Heitkamp (ND), Joe Manchin (WV), Bill Nelson (FL), Gary Peters (MI), Debbie Stabenow (MI) and Mark Warner (VA).

SCOTUSblog has reported Larsen holds a “broad view of executive power,” which may have pleased President Trump.

Larsen will join another recently confirmed 6th Circuit Court of Appeals Trump nominee: John K. Bush, an anti-gay far right wing blogger who once “joked” in a public speech he did not want to be mistaken for a “faggot.”

Judge Bush’s wife sits on the board of a group that raised $14 million for the re-election campaign of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a fellow Kentuckian.

The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals is so conservative that in 2014 it was the sole appeals court to rule states had the constitutional right to ban same-sex marriage. That ruling led to the U.S. Supreme Court to review several marriage rulings from that court and four other appeals courts, concluding that same-sex couples do have the same rights to marriage as different-sex couples.

Vanita Gupta, a former head of Obama’s U.S. Justice Dept. Civil Rights Division offered this scathing statement on Larsen’s confirmation:

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