Trump appellate court nominee defends experience at US Senate hearing
(Reuters) -A former clerk to three conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices who was chosen by President Donald Trump to become a federal appeals court judge faced questions from U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday about her youth and her support of the Republican president's order curtailing birthright citizenship.
Whitney Hermandorfer, 37, tapped to serve on the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, defended her record at the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee's first hearing on judicial nominees since Trump returned to office in January.
"The cases have come fast and furiously, and I've been privileged to handle a number of nationally significant matters," Hermandorfer, a lawyer serving under Tennessee's Republican attorney general, said.
The hearing comes as judges in dozens of cases have slowed or blocked some of Trump's initiatives to dramatically expand presidential authority and slash the federal bureaucracy, prompting calls from Trump and his allies for judges to be impeached or accusing them of being part of a "judicial coup."
Hermandorfer is the first of Trump's 11 judicial nominees so far to appear before the Republican panel, as the White House looks to further reshape a judiciary whose members have stymied key parts of his agenda. Four nominees to serve as trial court judges in Missouri appeared before the panel later on Wednesday.
Trump shifted the ideological balance of the judiciary to the right in his first term with a near-record 234 appointments, including three members of the Supreme Court's 6-3 conservative majority.
Hermandorfer clerked for Justices Samuel Alito and Amy Coney Barrett, and clerked for Justice Brett Kavanaugh while he was a judge on a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C.
Today, she heads a strategic litigation unit in Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti's office, where she has defended the state's near-total abortion ban and challenged a rule adopted under former Democratic President Joe Biden barring discrimination against transgender students.
Republican senators appeared likely to advance her nomination to the full Senate for its consideration, even as Democrats raised questions about the positions she'd taken in court and the 37-year-old's level of experience just a decade out of law school.
"I am concerned about the striking brevity of your professional record," Democratic Senator Chris Coons said.
He noted that the American Bar Association had long had a standard deeming judicial nominees qualified only if they had at least 12 years of experience.
Several Democrats criticized the Trump administration for deciding last week to cut off the legal organization's decades-old ability to vet judicial nominees as part of its ratings process. Republicans welcomed the move, accusing the nonpartisan group of bias against conservatives.
Hermandorfer said that while as an appellate lawyer she had never tried a case to a jury verdict, she had litigated over 100 appellate cases and argued four federal appeals.
"That sounds like quite a bit of experience," Republican Senator Josh Hawley said.
Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the committee, questioned Hermandorfer on a recent brief she filed on behalf of the state of Tennessee to the U.S. Supreme Court supporting the Trump administration's bid to let his executive order on birthright citizenship to take effect.
Trump's order directed federal agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of U.S.-born children who do not have at least one parent who is a citizen or lawful permanent resident.
The Supreme Court is weighing whether to narrow nationwide injunctions blocking enforcement of that order that were issued by three judges who concluded it clearly violated the citizenship clause of the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment.
Hermandorfer told Durbin that her office felt the justices should be provided information about evidence that she said showed that the 14th Amendment as originally interpreted after it was ratified in 1868 called into question whether the constitutionality of Trump's order was an "open and shut case."
"I stand by completely those arguments and the historical sources that we advanced to the court," she said.
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