This post is written by Estelle Rogers, retired Project Vote legislative director and longtime progressive advocate. Her opinions do not necessarily represent or reflect those of Project Vote.
It was in 1986 that most of us in the Washington legal community first heard of Jeff Sessions. Even his name seemed like a caricature of a Confederate General, but alas it was real. President Ronald Reagan had nominated Sessions to be a federal judge in the Southern District of Alabama, where he had been United States Attorney since 1981. The Sessions nomination marked one little speed bump in what had been, to that point, a smooth ride for the Reagan judicial picks (though the following year, the Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork did not withstand major roadblocks). Sessions’ nomination did not survive a vote of the Senate Judiciary Committee, but clearly he did.
Last week, we learned that Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III is the next President’s choice to be Attorney General of the United States. We all know that modern American political history has moved at lightning speed, and some of the players in that history “evolved” quickly too. Justice Hugo Black, it must be remembered, morphed from a Ku Klux Klansman in the 1930s to a liberal champion in the 1940s (and until his death in 1971). Not so, Jeff Sessions. For those of us who opposed his judicial nomination in 1986, including your author, it is déjà vu all over again. The man hasn’t changed, and neither has our opposition.
What led the majority of the Senate Judiciary Committee to vote down the Sessions nomination in 1986? Here’s a sampling:
- His decision to prosecute three civil rights workers, who had mailed absentee ballots on behalf of newly-registered black voters, on “mail fraud” and other spurious charges, of which they were acquitted in under three hours;
- His public statements labeling the ACLU and NAACP as “un-American” and “communist-inspired”;
- His insensitive workplace “jokes” about the Ku Klux Klan;
- His referring to a black Assistant US Attorney as “boy”; and
- His disparagement of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as “intrusive legislation.”
But probably more important than any individual incident, or even the sum of them, was the obvious animus that Jeff Sessions exhibited toward issues of race. His attitude vacillated between dismissal and denial. In a colloquy with Senators Ted Kennedy and Paul Simon, Sessions said that a “vote fraud” case, likely the case cited as the first example above, was “not a legitimate civil rights issue” but rather a political issue. The fundamental legal barriers to minorities had been knocked down, he said; racial justice groups should not be demanding things that are “beyond the traditional understanding of law.”
After his defeat, Sessions remained as U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of Alabama until 1993, and then served briefly as the state’s Attorney General. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1996. Many of us who had worked so hard to scuttle his judicial nomination quipped that if we had known he’d end up in the Senate, we might have thought twice about opposing his judgeship. But the ironies don’t end there. In 2009, after Senator Arlen Specter switched parties, Sessions became the leading Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, the same body that had dashed his judicial ambitions by a 10-8 vote. Arlen Specter had been one of two Republicans to vote against his nomination in 1986.
Sessions’ Senate career has been remarkably consistent with his earlier legal career in Alabama. He has voted against the interests of racial minorities, the LGBTQ+ community, and immigrants. He has opposed the Violence Against Women Act, the Affordable Care Act, marriage equality, reproductive rights, stem cell research, anti-torture measures, and hate crimes legislation. He has supported the Supreme Court’s Shelby County decision gutting the Voting Rights Act and the flying of the Confederate flag in Alabama. He has questioned the role of the Department of Justice in investigating and prosecuting police misconduct and civil rights violations in Ferguson, Missouri. He opposed all three of President Obama’s nominees to the Supreme Court, having cast committee and floor votes against Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, and opposed a hearing for Merrick Garland.
Unlike Merrick Garland, however, Jeff Sessions will likely have a full and fair hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee. He is entitled to that. But the same scrutiny that led to his defeat for a federal judgeship in 1986 should lead inexorably to his rejection for the office of Attorney General of the United States in 2016. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III hasn’t changed, and neither should our standards.
Estelle Rogers was Project Vote’s legislative director from 2009 until her retirement in 2015. Since leaving Project Vote, she has been spending her time on volunteer activities that include working at a food bank, mentoring a high school student, and fundraising for her local museum. She also remains passionate about improving our elections.