AFJ Action Campaign is tracking the votes of every senator up for reelection in 2020 on Trump’s worst of the worst judges. Each senator who voted to confirm these judges owns the decisions—these decisions are harming people every day. See how your senator voted for some of the worst of the worst judges here.
In EEOC v. AutoZone, Seventh Circuit judge Amy Coney Barrett sided against an African-American worker whose company transferred him to another store in accordance with their practice of segregating employees by race. As three dissenting judges noted, this allowed the company to continue a “separate-but-equal arrangement” despite Congress’s intent in passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to eliminate such blatant racism.
In Inclusive Communities Project. v. Lincoln Dev. Co., Fifth Circuit judges Don Willett, Kurt Engelhardt, Kyle Duncan, James Ho, and Andrew Oldham cast deciding votes to undermine the Fair Housing Act, making it very difficult to bring disparate impact claims.
In Lewis v. City of Union City, Eleventh Circuit judges Kevin Newson and Britt Grant upheld the dismissal of a workplace discrimination case in a manner that the dissent noted was contrary to Supreme Court precedent and “drops an anvil on the employer’s side of the balance.”
In Lewis v. Governor of Alabama, Eleventh Circuit judges Kevin Newson, Britt Grant, and Elizabeth Branch dismissed a lawsuit brought by the NAACP after the state legislature nullified a Birmingham ordinance that raised the local minimum wage; the NAACP argued that the state purposefully discriminated against Birmingham’s Black-majority city council and citizens.
In Johnson v. Ohio Department of Public Safety, Sixth Circuit judge Amul Thapar upheld the dismissal of an African-American state trooper’s racial workplace discrimination claim over a dissent, which highlighted how he created too narrow a test for bringing Title VII cases.
In Mitchell v. LaRose, Sixth Circuit judge Amul Thapar cast the deciding vote, over a scathing dissent, to reject a claim that an African American was excluded as a juror in the case of another African American.
In Fowler v. Benson, Sixth Circuit judge Amul Thapar cast the deciding vote to uphold a Michigan law that automatically suspends the drivers’ licenses of poor people who are unable to pay traffic fines without regard to their ability to pay and without affording them payment alternatives. Two single mothers who were unable to pay traffic fines challenged the law as violating due process. Driver’s license suspension laws that criminalize poverty have a disproportionate impact on people of color.