Welcome to our weekly “Trumptastrophe” series that serves to remind us of the destructive policies, decisions, and actions we encountered during the Trump presidency and the threats that he and others in the MAGA movement still pose – and to keep those moments clear in our memory as we fight to defeat Republican extremists during the upcoming elections.
This week’s Trumptastrophe focuses on former President Trump’s efforts to reshaped the federal judiciary by nominating judges that would uphold his extreme MAGA agenda:
On Sept. 7, 2017, Trump nominated Matthew Kacsmaryk, a lawyer at the religious-right legal group First Liberty, to become a lifetime federal judge in the Northern District of Texas, one of several far-right nominations Trump made the same day. Kacsmaryk, who was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2019, has become notorious as a judge that “judge-shopping” right-wing groups rely on to issue rulings twisting the law in their favor.
People For the American Way and other civil and human rights groups opposed Kacsmaryk’s confirmation based on his record of hostility toward LGBTQ+ people and legal protections as well as his opposition to Roe v. Wade and women’s right to contraception. As the Texas Tribune has reported, “Under his leadership, First Liberty was involved in several legal fights over reproductive health care, including trying to block the 'contraception mandate' which required health insurers to pay for birth control. Kacsmaryk himself has been outspoken in his opposition to LGBTQ rights.”
Kacsmaryk and First Liberty have been active in the religious-right movement’s successful efforts to use conservative judges to redefine and weaponize religious liberty. As predicted, Kacsmaryk has used his position as a federal judge to continue his career as a right-wing culture warrior, advancing the legal and political positions he advocated for as a religious-right activist. Legal analyst Ian Millhiser wrote in 2022 that rules allowing right-wing groups to get their cases before Kacsmaryk have made him “one of the most powerful men in America.”
More from Millhiser:
Often, Kacsmaryk’s opinions suggest not only that he knows he is defying the law, but also that he revels in doing so. His opinion in Neese, for example, opens with a quote from Justice Samuel Alito’s dissenting opinion in Bostock. A dissent, by definition, is not the law. Indeed, it is often the opposite of the law, because dissenting opinions state arguments that a majority of the Court rejected.
Among his controversial rulings:
- He ruled in Deanda v. Becerra that a federal program that provides grants for family planning and contraceptive health care was illegal because it did not require grant recipients to get parental permission before providing teenagers with access to birth control.
- In 2022, Kacsmaryk overturned the Biden administration’s interpretation that the Affordable Care Act’s prohibition of discrimination “on the basis of sex” applied to discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
- In Neese v. Becerra, Kacsmaryk sided with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s challenge to Biden administration rules applying the Supreme Court’s Bostock ruling to protect transgender workers from discrimination on the job.
- Last year, he ruled in favor of the Alliance Defending Freedom’s attempt to ban the distribution of a common abortion medication, mifepristone, by challenging the FDA’s approval of the drug more than 20 years ago. In his ruling, he used language deployed by anti-abortion activists.
On the same day Trump nominated Kacsmaryk, he also nominated another former First Liberty lawyer, Jeff Mateer, whose nomination was withdrawn after widespread outrage over comments denouncing transgender children as part of “Satan’s plan.” He also nominated Trump loyalist Gregory Katsas, a former Clarence Thomas clerk who appeared on Trump’s list of potential Supreme Court justices, to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. That same day, Trump’s Justice Department filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that businesses have a constitutional right to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.
Kacsmaryk and other lower court Trump judges are a reminder that it is not only the Trump Supreme Court justices who threaten American’s freedoms. As People For the American Way has pointed out repeatedly, bad judges can have devastating consequences, and it should be unthinkable to give Trump the power to name hundreds of judges in the Kacsmaryk mold to lifetime positions on the courts.
Just as importantly, good, fair-minded judges can and do make a powerful difference, as the brilliant and diverse group of judges nominated by President Joe Biden make clear.
There are countless reasons to vote against Donald Trump this November, but one of the most critical is stopping him and his MAGA allies from further reshaping the federal judiciary with judges who back their extreme and dangerous agenda.
These are just some of the reasons we need YOU in this fight. So, find your favorite way to unwind after reading through this week’s recap, and then make a plan for how you will fight back this week, this month, this election cycle.
