POLITICS
Two Trump Appointees Confi rmed to Ninth Circuit
Gay conservative Patrick Bumatay makes history; Lawrence VanDyke known for homophobia
BY MATT TRACY
The determined campaign by President
Donald Trump and the Republican
controlled US Senate to stack
federal courts with controversial
conservative judges continued on December 11
when two of his appointees to the US Court of
Appeals for the Ninth Circuit — one of whom is
a gay man — were confi rmed by the US Senate.
Civil rights groups voiced strong opposition
to Patrick Bumatay, an out gay federal prosecutor,
and Lawrence VanDyke, who had served as
solicitor general in both Nevada and Montana,
because both have histories of antagonism toward
marginalized groups. Though LGBTQ advocates
focused their fi re on VanDyke, who has
a stridently anti-gay record, Bumatay was opposed
strongly by the Leadership Conference on
Civil & Human Rights , an umbrella group that
includes GLSEN, the Human Rights Campaign,
Lambda Legal, the Matthew Shepard Foundation,
the National Black Justice Coalition, the
National Center for Transgender Equality, the
National LGBTQ Task Force, PFLAG, and Pride
at Work, among many national organizations.
Signifi cantly, Bumatay, who has most recently
served as an assistant US attorney for
the Southern District of California, was opposed
by both of his home state senators, Democrats
Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris.
Feinstein objected to Bumatay’s work enforcing
the Trump administration’s family separation
policy in which he contributed to a 2018
memorandum to federal prosecutors calling for
zero-tolerance approaches to cases of illegal entry
at the southern border. Prior to his post in
California’s Southern District, he worked in different
capacities within the Department of Justice.
Feinstein also voiced doubt that Bumatay’s
work experience qualifi ed him to serve as a federal
appellate judge.
Among other red fl ags, he backed Neil Gorsuch
and Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court
nominations and, along with VanDyke, is a
member of the right-wing Federalist Society,
which recommends conservative appointees to
Trump. The president had already appointed
Bumatay to the US District Court for the Southern
District of California, but that nomination
was withdrawn when he was appointed to the
Ninth Circuit bench.
Lambda Legal, which fi ercely opposed Van-
Dyke’s nomination, told Bloomberg Law that
it was not opposing Bumatay, though a report
the group published, “Trump’s Judicial Assault
on LGBT Rights,” faulted the president’s reliance
on Federalist Society members as judicial
YOUTUBE/ SENATOR SHELDON WHITEHOUSE
Lawrence VanDyke, one of two Trump nominees to the Ninth Circuit
Court of Appeals who won confi rmation on December 11.
PEOPLE FOR THE AMERICAN WAY
Patrick Butamay, an out gay nominee who won confi rmation.
nominees and mentioned Bumatay by name in
a footnote on that point.
Bumatay is the second out LGBTQ person to
be nominated by Trump after Mary Rowland, a
lesbian who is on the US District Court for the
Northern District of Illinois, and he becomes the
fi rst to sit on one of the 12 federal circuit courts
of appeals (separate from the specialized-pleas
Federal Circuit, to which President Barack
Obama appointed Todd Hughes in 2013).
More than two-dozen queer and HIV advocacy
groups, including Lambda Legal, Equality
New York, and the LGBT Bar Association of New
York, signed on to a letter opposing VanDyke’s
appointment that laid out his history of anti-
LGBTQ rhetoric, including his statement that
same-sex marriages would “hurt families and
consequentially children and society.”
VanDyke served as solicitor general of Nevada
from 2015 until this year, when he became
deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice
Department’s Environment and Natural
Resources Division. His work history includes
stints representing the anti-LGBTQ Alliance
Defending Freedom.
VanDyke managed to put on a show during
a hearing in October when he appeared to tear
up in response to questions about his anti-
LGBTQ record, but his actions in that area are
not just distant memories. He used his power
to promote homophobia when, as solicitor general
of Montana, he signed friend-of-the-court
briefs backing state-based bans on same-sex
marriage.
“For our legal system to have credibility, people
must have confi dence that judges will follow
the facts and the law, and yet Mr. VanDyke has
refused to disavow his prior statements promoting
harmful and unfounded myths about LGBT
people, including the long-since discredited notion
that marriage equality will somehow hurt
families, and consequently children and society,”
Sasha Buchert, a senior attorney at Lambda
Legal, said in a written statement.
The American Bar Association also sent a
letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chair
Lindsey Graham and to Feinstein, the ranking
Democratic member, saying that the group’s
Standing Committee deemed VanDyke “not
qualifi ed” based on integrity, professional competence,
and judicial temperament.
“Mr. VanDyke’s accomplishments are offset
by the assessments of interviewees that Mr.
VanDyke is arrogant, lazy, an ideologue, and
lacking in knowledge of the day-today practice
including procedural rules,” the letter stated.
“There was a theme that the nominee lacks humility,
has an ‘entitlement’ temperament, does
not have an open mind, and does not always
have a commitment to being candid and truthful.”
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals encompasses
Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii,
Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington,
as well as two territories: Guam and
the Northern Mariana Islands. The circuit has
a liberal reputation, and it is the circuit whose
rulings Trump has inveighed against most
strenuously.
Alarmingly, Trump has now appointed 50
circuit court judges, far outpacing the 55 total
circuit court judges appointed by former President
Barack Obama over eight years. He has
also put 120 judges on district court benches
around the nation and, of course, named two
associate justices to the Supreme Court.
December 19, 2019 - January 1, 2 14 020 | GayCityNews.com
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