Three of the nominees only graduated law school within the last decade, according to a detractor
A US Senate panel dominated by members of the Republican party has voted to progress the first five judicial nominees presented by US President Donald Trump for his second term in office, reported Reuters.
Whitney Hermandorfer, Joshua Divine, Zachary Bluestone, Maria Lanahan, and Cristian Stevens advanced under a 12-10 vote by the US Senate Judiciary Committee. Hermandorfer's nomination will be sent to the full Senate for consideration on whether or not she should be confirmed to a life-tenured position on the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati; the other four are looking to be appointed to Missouri's Eastern District as federal trial court judges.
Committee chair Chuck Grassley described the candidates as "truly excellent, well-qualified nominees" in a statement published by Reuters. However, Senator Dick Durbin challenged the nominations, pointing out that Hermandorfer, Divine (who is Missouri solicitor general), and Bluestone (a federal prosecutor) all just graduated law school within the last decade.
Durbin also highlighted Hermandorfer's "inexperience, her partisan ideology, and her apparent willingness to support even the most unlawful efforts of the Trump administration" in a statement published by the Gazette. Hermandorfer was a clerk under Supreme Court justices Samuel Alito and Amy Coney Barrett, as well as under Justice Brett Kavanaugh while he was on the federal appeals court bench in Washington, D.C. She presently leads a strategic litigation unit in Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti's office.
In addition, Durbin highlighted an op-ed written by Divine in college that supported the requirement for prospective voters to pass a literacy test - a requirement of the Jim Crow era prior to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Divine told Democrats that he had penned the op-ed in ignorance of aspects of the law around such literacy tests; however, Senator Peter Welch noted the "extreme" nature of Divine's views at that age.
"I was in college. You were in college. And the views that he's expressed then, and I think still adheres to, are, I think, really, really extreme and have no place on the bench," Welch said in a statement published by Reuters.
Hermandorfer, Divine, Bluestone, Lanahan, and Stevens are the first five out of a 12-strong cohort of judicial nominees Trump has announced thus far to go through the committee.
