Fair and Just Courts

Although she has not been as directly involved in other civil rights issues as she was during the Reagan Administration, two articles concerning employment discrimination that Kuhl authored when she was in private practice raise serious concerns about her philosophy toward protecting employees from non-merit based employment decisions as well as remedying discrimination. In one, Kuhl made clear that she is opposed to affirmative action, which she called “a divisive societal manipulation.” (Ashkenazy v. Liu, No. BC 149503).

In an effort to rehabilitate Owen’s failed nomination, Senate Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch held another hearing for Justice Owen on March 13, 2003, even though he acknowledged that she had received a full and fair hearing last July. At the March 13 hearing, Senator Hatch, several other Republican senators, and Justice Owen tried to explain away three serious concerns that helped lead to the rejection of her nomination: the criticism by White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and other Bush appointees to the Texas Supreme Court of a number of Owen’s frequent dissents and attempts at judicial activism; Owen’s judicial activism in attempting to impose additional barriers on the exercise of the right to reproductive choice; and Owen’s frequent dissents and efforts at judicial activism in favor of corporate and other interests in cases in which the majority had protected the rights of consumers and other citizens. As with her first hearing last year, however, the March 13 hearing failed to resolve, and instead reinforced, these serious concerns.