WASHINGTON (CN) - The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday advanced six of President Donald Trump's judicial nominations, including one to the Fifth Circuit who faced opposition from Democrats and liberal groups over his work advocating conservative legal causes in court.
The committee began consideration of the nominees last week, but lengthy speeches from lawmakers in opposition and support of some of the nominees ran the meeting into scheduled votes and forced the committee to delay its work for a week. Seeking a shorter meeting this week, most senators did not make comments before voting on the nominees Thursday.
Andrew Oldham, who serves as general counsel to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, has spent much of his relatively short legal career as a government attorney and has faced questions from Democrats and liberal groups about his involvement in several high-profile challenges to Obama-era policies.
Oldham, who previously worked as Texas' deputy solicitor general, was the lead lawyer on the state's challenge to the Obama executive action extending protections from deportation to people in the country illegally who had children who were citizens or legal permanent residents. A federal court enjoined the so-called DAPA program, which never went into effect.
A member of the conservative Federalist Society, Oldham also worked on a challenge to Obama-era environmental regulations and on a friend of the court brief on behalf of Texas in the Supreme Court case that struck down a portion of the Voting Rights Act.
In response to questions submitted in writing after his nomination hearing, Oldham nodded to the concerns of voter identification law opponents, but said he could not comment further because such laws are the subject of ongoing litigation.
"Any law that regulates how voters vote can impose burdens," Oldham wrote in response to questions submitted in writing after his nomination hearing. "The question in each case is whether those regulations are lawful."
During the meeting last week, Democrats cited Oldham's limited experience and history of advocating in court on hot-button issues as reasons to oppose his nomination.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., also objected to comments Oldham made at the University of Chicago in 2016, in which he questioned the legitimacy of the administrative state.
Oldham told Whitehouse during his nomination hearing that he made the comments on behalf of Abbott and that they did not necessarily represent his personal views. Whitehouse was unconvinced, saying Oldham calling the administrative state "enraging" would suggest otherwise.
"It's really hard for me to see how you can be personally enraged by the existence of the Environmental Protection Agency because you believe it is illegitimate and then walk back from that personal rage and sit up there on a bench and say don't worry EPA, I'm going to treat you fairly," Whitehouse said at the Judiciary Committee's meeting last week.
Oldham assured senators he would abandon his previous advocacy if the Senate gave him the chance to trade his seat at the counsel's table for a black robe and chair on the other side of the bench.
"All judges have personal beliefs and all former litigators have a record of previous advocacy positions," Oldham wrote to senators. "It is nonetheless incumbent on every judge to put aside his or her personal beliefs and previous clients and instead to apply the law fairly and faithfully, without regard to persons, prejudice or politics. If confirmed, I would do so in every case and every day."