Members of People For the American Way and Granite State Progress delivered 92 empty chairs to U.S. Senator Kelly Ayotte’s Nashua district office yesterday to symbolize the seats on the federal courts left vacant by Republican obstruction of the president’s judicial nominees. This event took place on the first day of the U.S. Supreme Court’s new term as part of a nationwide Day of Action to call attention to the dozens of unfilled vacancies on the federal courts.
When it comes to partisan filibustering of judicial nominees, Sen. Ayotte has consistently taken her marching orders from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. She was a willing partner in Republican efforts to filibuster highly qualified nominees to fill circuit and district court vacancies. In late 2013, she even followed McConnell’s party edict to filibuster all three of President Obama’s D.C. Circuit nominees. Senate Republicans admitted that this was not based on any nominee’s qualifications—they argued that Obama should not be able to fill any of the three vacancies on the 11-member court. It was a transparent effort to keep the D.C. Circuit with a majority of very conservative judges. And since Ayotte’s party took over the Senate last year, the number of judicial vacancies has doubled, while the number of those designated emergencies has tripled.
“Now that the Senate is out for recess through the election and the Supreme Court is beginning a new session, it’s official: Sen. Kelly Ayotte hasn’t only aided some of the most far-right Republicans in the Senate by refusing to move forward with hearings and a vote to fill the Supreme Court vacancy, but she’s also stood with obstructionist Republicans in refusing to take action on other federal judicial nominations,” said Linds Jakows, NH Campaign Organizer with People For the American Way. “This is especially troubling since she tries so hard to brand herself as ‘bipartisan and independent.’ She clearly hasn’t listened to voters who know that obstructing justice on the highest courts and paving the way for Trump’s extreme shortlist is neither independent nor bipartisan.”