AFJ Action Campaign

Past Campaign: Stop Duncan

UPDATE:  On April 24, 2018, the Senate voted to confirm Stuart Kyle Duncan to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.


Stuart Kyle Duncan was President Trump’s nominee for a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

Duncan’s record demonstrates his animosity to LGBTQ rights, reproductive rights, immigrants’ rights, and the rights of people of color. Duncan is so dedicated to undermining the voting rights of people of color that he, along with fellow Trump judicial nominees Thomas Farr and Stephen Schwartz, worked to defend a North Carolina voting law that the Fourth Circuit said targeted African Americans “with almost surgical precision.”

Duncan has demonstrated a unique hostility towards the LGBTQ community. He represented the Virginia school board that discriminated against transgender high schooler Gavin Grimm, has suggested that transgender people are mentally ill, and dismissed the concept of gender identity as a “delusion.” He also fought against the rights of gay couples to adopt in Alabama and Louisiana, and warned that if the Supreme Court recognized marriage equality as a fundamental right, the “harms” to our democracy “would be severe, unavoidable, and irreversible.” He has spoken several times to Alliance Defending Freedom, a designated “hate group” that has defended policies abroad that include state-sanctioned sterilization of transgender people, and that make being gay a crime carrying penalties as severe as death.

Duncan also fought against reproductive rights, serving as the lead counsel in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, which allows corporations to claim religious grounds for denying employees insurance coverage for contraception, and provides a roadmap for businesses to claim religious grounds to deny critical protections to LGBTQ employees. Duncan even questioned the idea that birth control is “necessary for ‘the good life,’ health and economic success of society, particularly women,” and once compared losing access to birth control to losing free lawn care.

Donald Trump nominated Duncan because he believes that he, like other Trump nominees, would be a rubber stamp for his radical agenda, which threatens women, workers, LGBTQ people, immigrants, and people of color. But we can fight back against this nomination and Trump’s efforts to pack our courts with extremists like Duncan. Our AFJAC toolkit will help you learn how.

UPDATE:  On April 24, 2018, the Senate voted to confirm Stuart Kyle Duncan to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.


Donald Trump nominated Duncan because he believes that he, like other Trump nominees, would be a rubber stamp for his radical agenda, which threatens women, workers, LGBTQ people, immigrants, and people of color. But we can fight back against this nomination and Trump’s efforts to pack our courts with extremists like Duncan.