Senate confirms antigay Pryor

Nearing the end of an unprecedented run of long-delayed confirmations, the U.S. Senate on Thursday approved former Alabama attorney general William Pryor for a seat on the U.S. appeals court. With a vote of 53-45, Pryor was approved for the 11th U.S. circuit court of appeals in Atlanta, which handles federal appeals from Alabama, Georgia, and Florida.

Pryor, who already had a temporary seat, along with Janice Rogers Brown and Priscilla Owen had been waiting at least two years for Senate confirmation. Democrats have blocked the nominations of the judges because they were considered too conservative. "Judge Pryor was passed out of committee two years ago before twice being filibustered," said Republican senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas. "Judge Pryor is a distinguished jurist who deserves to be confirmed."

The gay rights group Human Rights Campaign strongly condemned the Pryor confirmation because he has a demonstrated track record of bias against the rights of GLBT people. "The American people deserve justice, not prejudice," said HRC president Joe Solmonese. "We thank senators from both parties who stood with us and the civil rights community, and we will continue to advocate for fair-minded judges and against radical nominees who would roll back basic civil rights. With judges like Pryor on the courts of appeal, the Supreme Court is more important than ever."

As Alabama attorney general, Pryor consistently demonstrated bias against GLBT Americans, linking the state government Web site to antigay advocacy groups. In a friend-of-the-court brief filed in the Lawrence v. Texas case, Pryor compared homosexuality to bestiality and pedophilia. Last year, after receiving a recess appointment to the 11th circuit, Pryor cast the deciding vote to deny rehearing a challenge to Florida's antigay adoption law. "Anyone who lets their own personal prejudices shape their decisions from the bench poses a threat to the rights of all Americans," added Solmonese.

More than 175 national groups opposed Pryor's appointment, including the Log Cabin Republicans, Lambda Legal, the NAACP, NARAL Pro-Choice America, People for the American Way, the Sierra Club, and World Association of Persons With Disabilities.

Democratic leaders also wanted Pryor stopped, saying he will be a conservative vote against civil rights, women's rights, and the environment. "This is truly the trifecta on civil rights here this week in Washington, to confirm Janice Rogers Brown and William Pryor and to report Terrence Boyle from this committee," said Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois, the Senate's number 2 Democrat. "When it comes to the issue of civil rights, it's a sad week."

The Senate also plans to confirm two other nominees, Michigan judges David McKeague and Richard Griffin, to the sixth circuit in Cincinnati, and it expects to advance the nomination of Terrence Boyle, a North Carolina judge nominated to the fourth circuit in Richmond, Va. It takes 60 votes to bypass a filibuster. Republicans were able to get only 53 votes for Pryor in July 2003 and only 51 votes that November. Bush bypassed the filibustering Democrats by giving Pryor a temporary appointment to the 11th circuit in February 2004, a recess appointment that expires at the end of the year.

Pryor's stint on the Atlanta court has not caused any controversy, a point noted by Senate Judiciary chairman Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, who circulated some of Pryor's writings on that court hoping it would sway some Democratic votes. The Atlanta-based court helped to decide the fate of Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged woman whose parents and husband fought all the way to the Supreme Court over whether to keep her alive. The federal courts refused to stop the removal of her feeding tube.

Pryor has never made public which way he voted in the Schiavo case. One of the court's orders did say Pryor did not vote because he is recovering from surgery. Pryor opposes abortion rights and has criticized the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision. But he promised that he would follow the law if confirmed for the regional court, one step below the Supreme Court.

The deadlocks over the nominations of Pryor, Brown, and Owen ended under last month's historic deal on judicial filibusters. Crafted by Senate centrists, it avoided a partisan showdown over the White House's judicial nominees. A vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee on Boyle was delayed Thursday morning, but committee senators plan to try to meet again Thursday evening to move his nomination to the full Senate for confirmation. Senators plan to leave Bush's other controversial nominees dangling while they wait to see if there's a Supreme Court debate in their future. (AP, Advocate.com)