Because President Donald Trump is getting the boot on January 20, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is rushing through as many of Trump’s judicial appointments as possible.
This includes Stephen Schwartz, a 36-year-old who has just been given a 15-year appointment to the Court of Federal Claims, a court that hears cases of people suing the federal government for institutional abuse and failures. Schwartz’s history of courtroom transphobia is particularly troubling, as is the fact that he never argued a single case in the court which he now sits.
Schwartz defended the Gloucester County School Board of Virginia when it tried to bar trans boy Gavin Grimm from using the school bathroom that matched his gender identity.
“[Schwartz] also defended North Carolina’s anti-LGBTQ House Bill 2, which prohibited North Carolina cities from enacting non-discrimination laws and prohibited trans people from using the correct bathrooms in government buildings, including public schools, colleges, and universities,” Wonkette writes.
Additionally, Schwartz defended a North Carolina voter suppression law that the Fourth Circuit court said “target[ed] African Americans with almost surgical precision,” and once argued that Social Security should be abolished because economic inequality “is a natural aspect of the human condition.”
McConnell’s rush of judicial appointments during a lame-duck period is unprecedented, but his last chance to install long-term conservatives on the bench before he starts obstructing the judicial appointments of Democratic President-elect Joe Biden.