6-17-05, 10:33 am

Advancing to the floor of the Senate, Terrence Boyle’s Appeals Court nomination passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on a party-line vote.

Initially the committee postponed consideration of Boyle, signaling strong opposition to Boyle’s nomination. But because the Senate has recently confirmed three of President Bush’s most controversial judicial nominees, using the threat of the so-called nuclear option, the Republican leadership was eager to press the issue with Boyle. Wade Henderson, Executive Director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the nation’s oldest, largest, and most diverse civil and human rights coalition responded to the vote, saying, 'Given the Republican’s lockstep effort to stack the courts with activist ideologues, I am not surprised Judge Boyle was forced through committee in a party line vote.'

Boyle’s record shows his strong opposition to civil rights and the concept of federal protections against discrimination. But critics of Boyle’s record also point to a lack of competence and credibility.

According to a coalition of civil rights and judicial independence activists, Save Our Courts, 'Judge Boyle’s record shows a blatant disregard for precedent and raises serious questions about his abilities as a jurist.'

A protege of former Senator Jesse Helms, Boyle was appointed to his current position by Ronald Reagan. In his two decades on the bench, Boyle has made as many as 12,000 decisions, but only 400 of his decisions have been published. And the White House is refusing to provide his other opinions to the public, an extraordinary move, as the administration hasn’t hesitated to do so for its other judicial nominees.

A review of his published opinions and decisions shows Boyle to have 'repeatedly promoted ‘states’ rights’ at the expense of individuals’ federally protected civil rights,' says Save Our Courts.

Boyle has attacked the American with Disabilities Act and has a troubling history of denying voting rights.
According to the People for the American Way, Boyle’s decision in the case of Cromartie v. Hunt (1998) is one of many he has issued that attempt to rewrite existing law in order to deny Americans their civil rights.

In this case, Boyle sided with plaintiffs who challenged a North Carolina congressional redistricting plan designed to provide equal representation for Black voters. But Boyle’s reasoning, say legal experts, was so flawed that his opinion was twice reversed by the Supreme Court, once in a unanimous opinion authored by Justice Clarence Thomas

It hasn’t only been the high court that has reversed Boyle’s opinions, however. The 4th Circuit – the very court to which Terrence Boyle has been nominated – has repeatedly reversed Boyle’s decisions because of 'plain error' and other fundamental legal mistakes.

Judge Boyle’s rulings have been reversed more than 150 times, an astonishingly high rate of reversal that raises serious questions about Boyle’s fitness to serve at the appellate level.

'Based on the available record, it is clear that Terrence Boyle should not be promoted to the appellate bench,' said People For the American Way President Ralph G. Neas. 'He has a dismal record in civil rights and liberties cases, an unusually high number of troubling reversals, and a severe lack of credibility.'

'Why elevate someone to one of the most important courts in the land when his commitment to fundamental principles and even his very competence is in doubt?' Neas added.

Extremist ideology and competence are important reasons to vote against Boyle, but add to that lying.

This past winter Boyle misled Senators about his startlingly high reversal rate. After initially acknowledging to the Senate that higher courts had reversed or criticized his decisions 139 times, Boyle changed his story and tried to mislead senators, claiming that only 68 of his rulings had been reversed or criticized, when the actual number is more than 150

Boyle further has failed to honor his promise to release his unpublished opinions, making it impossible to evaluate his record fully. What is he hiding?

LCCR head Wade Henderson summed up by stating, 'At the end of the day, Judge Boyle’s judicial record of hostility to the rights of Americans is exceeded only by the breadth of his proven record of incompetence as a federal district court judge. He does not deserve to be promoted to any US Circuit Court, much less one as important as the Fourth Circuit.'



--Reach Martha Kramer at pa-letters@politicalaffairs.net.