Blue slips off the table for Dems as Senate spars over Sixth Circuit nominee Ritz

WASHINGTON (CN) — Lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee traded blows Wednesday over the Biden administration’s nominee for the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, as Democrats followed through on what they said was a Republican precedent of eschewing bipartisanship.

The White House last month tapped Kevin Ritz, currently a U.S. attorney for the Western District of Tennessee, to fill a vacancy on the Sixth Circuit, which takes cases from lower courts in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.

During a hearing Wednesday in the Senate Judiciary Committee, Republicans — particularly Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn — bristled at the nominee, who they said was advanced without blue slip approvals from his home state lawmakers.

Blackburn told her colleagues that she and fellow Tennessee Senator Bill Hagerty tried to work with the White House to identify nominees to fill the Sixth Circuit vacancy but that the administration ignored their suggestions to move ahead with Ritz.

“It is abundantly clear that, despite the White House’s assurances to the contrary, there was a back room deal to appoint Mr. Ritz to this vacancy from the very start,” she said.

Blackburn accused the Biden administration and Democrats of abandoning blue slipping, a longstanding Senate tradition which allows home state senators to formally support or oppose judicial nominees. The White House, she said, provided Tennessee lawmakers with no opportunity to weigh in on Ritz’s nomination.

“The most glaring example of the White House’s outright refusal to consult is the fact that they have not even bothered to ask what our objections to Mr. Ritz might be,” said Blackburn.

Senator Dick Durbin, chair of the Judiciary Committee, pushed back on his colleague, arguing that the White House had discussed the Sixth Circuit vacancy as far back as August and had given Blackburn and Hagerty the opportunity to choose three candidates for the position, including Ritz.

“The Tennessee senators refused to do so,” he said, adding that Blackburn did not take up offers to interview the nominee until March.

Durbin also said that Democrats advancing a nominee without blue slip support was in keeping with precedent set by the Judiciary Committee’s previous Republican majority. He pointed out that Republicans had cut Democrats out of judicial appointment deliberations under the Trump administration.

“Today, and throughout this session, I am following the same standard,” Durbin said. “There cannot be one set of rules for Republican nominees and another for Democratic nominees.”

The chairman has stood by the blue slip process for federal court nominees, holding it up as a last vestige of bipartisanship and defending it from critics who argue it is easily exploited.

Speaking to Courthouse News following Wednesday’s hearing, Durbin said he would continue his efforts to keep blue slips going for federal court picks but signaled that the process would be out of the question for appeals court nominees, again pointing to a precedent set by Republicans.

“We’re going to play by the same rules they created,” he said.

Meanwhile, committee Republicans had sharp questions for Ritz, who they accused of ethically questionable conduct during his time as a federal prosecutor.

Multiple lawmakers, including Blackburn and Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, grilled the nominee on a 2008 case he prosecuted in the Western District of Tennessee, questioning whether he had misrepresented the terms of a plea deal to the defendant’s counsel. The lawmaker contended that Ritz’s conduct had been the basis of a formal complaint to the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility.

According to court documents, the defendant’s lawyer asked to withdraw from the case after discovering that the terms of the plea deal, which she said had been provided by Ritz and relayed to her client, were inaccurate and set the defendant up for a harsher sentence.

Hawley accused Ritz of “sandbagging” the plea deal and tacking on an extra charge to the agreement.

The nominee, however, denied that he had done anything out of line and said he had no knowledge of any formal complaint made against him. The allegations of improper behavior, he said, were false.

“It’s very important for [U.S. attorneys] and defense attorneys to be able to trust each other,” Ritz told lawmakers, “and I took my reputation very seriously.”

Carl Tobias, chair of the University of Richmond School of Law, said Wednesday that evidence linking Ritz to unethical behavior was thin. He pointed out that the Sixth Circuit nominee had received the highest possible rating from the American Bar Association, which ranked him as well qualified.

Despite the grilling he received in committee, Tobias said there was still a path forward for Ritz.

“I think that the [Judiciary Committee] and floor votes may be close, but the Senate will confirm the nominee,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Judiciary Committee spent only a few minutes Wednesday questioning three federal court nominees: Brian Murphy, nominated to the District of Massachusetts, Rebecca Pennell, tapped for the Eastern District of Washington and Jeannette Vargas, nominated to the Southern District of New York.

Follow @BenjaminSWeiss

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