Executive Session
Floor Speech
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Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, this week in the Senate we are calling attention to the unfortunate obstructionism coming from the other side of the aisle when it comes to President Obama's nominations. There are now 101 nominees who have been voted out of committee--most of them with unanimous support but who are languishing on the Senate floor because the Republican minority won't allow them to have a vote. In many cases, they won't even give a reason--they are using anonymous holds. That is fundamentally unfair.
Let me speak briefly about a nominee we will vote on today: Marisa Demeo. She was nominated to be an associate judge on the District of Columbia Superior Court. This is a local court here in Washington that primarily hears misdemeanor and felony cases. It is not a Federal court and its judges do not serve lifetime appointments.
Marisa Demeo is currently a magistrate judge on this court, and she has an excellent reputation. She is a former Federal prosecutor and was hired by the John Ashcroft Justice Department as an assistant U.S. attorney here in Washington.
Before she was a prosecutor, she was a civil rights lawyer in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division and at the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund, one of the most respected civil rights organizations in America.
Judge Demeo has received numerous awards throughout her legal career, including the ``Rising Legal Star'' award from the Hispanic Bar Association Ðof Washington, DC, and a Special Achievement Award from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia.
Judge Demeo was unanimously approved by the Senate committee that oversees DC Superior Court nominations, so you would think she would be confirmed by the full Senate in short order. Well you would be wrong. After being voted out of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on May 20, 2009, Judge Demeo has been held up on the Senate floor ever since. For 11 months now, the Republican minority obstructed her nomination and objected to an up-or-down vote. No other nominee of President Obama's has been pending on the Senate floor longer than Judge Demeo.
As a result of this delay, the DC Superior Court has struggled to handle its crushing caseload. Last month, the Senate received a letter from the chief judge of that court, Lee Satterfield, who said the following:
The Superior Court is a busy, urban court with a caseload of over 100,000 cases per year. Each day we make life and death decisions about neglected and abused children, juveniles alleged to have committed crimes, criminals charged with everything from minor misdemeanors to first degree murder and sex abuse. ..... [T]he people of the District of Columbia deserve a court with a full complement of judges making the crucial decisions affecting the lives of D.C. residents.
I am pleased the Republicans have finally relented and agreed to a vote on Judge Demeo. We owe it to her, and we owe it to the people of the District of Columbia.
I know there has been some criticism of some positions Judge Demeo took when she worked at MALDEF. A few of my Republican colleagues have discussed these criticisms on the Senate floor today. I would like to make two points in response.
First, the positions Judge Demeo took when she was an advocate at MALDEF are mainstream positions. She advocated for comprehensive immigration reform. She opposed the nomination of Miguel Estrada, one of President Bush's most controversial nominees. She supported affirmative action, and she opposed a photo ID requirement in the voting context because of its adverse impact on minorities. And she opposed a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. These are positions I share, and many members of the Senate share. They are positions that are hardly out of step with the political mainstream in America.
In any event, Judge Demeo has been a magistrate judge for the past three years, and she has demonstrated her ability to be fair and impartial. She has skillfully made the transition from advocate to judge, and she deserves this promotion from magistrate judge to associate judge on the DC Superior Court. I urge my colleagues to support her confirmation.
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