GOP Advances Judicial Nominee Who Called Affordable Care Act ‘Illegitimate’
Issues
WASHINGTON ― Amid a national health emergency that has left millions of Americans out of a job and worrying about health insurance, Senate Republicans moved forward Wednesday with confirming a judicial nominee who has called the Affordable Care Act “illegitimate,” “perverse” and “liberal-utopia-dictated healthcare.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee held a confirmation hearing for Cory Wilson, 49, who is up for a lifetime seat on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.
Democrats grilled Wilson, a Mississippi state judge and former state legislator, over his record of attacking LGBTQ rights, abortion rights and voting rights.
They had a lot to work with.
In 2012, Wilson called same-sex marriage “a pander to liberal interest groups and an attempt to cast Republicans as intolerant, uncaring and even bigoted.” In 2016, as a state legislator, he voted for what has been dubbed the nation’s most extreme anti-LGBTQ law; it allows businesses to refuse service to married same-sex couples, people who have sex outside of marriage and transgender people by citing religious freedom.
He said he supported “the complete and immediate reversal of Roe v. Wade” in a 2007 Mississippi Right to Life questionnaire.
And in a 2011 op-ed, Wilson dismissed the NAACP’s concerns about a proposed Mississippi voter ID law as “poppycock.” He later ripped the Department of Justice for sending election observers to the state.
“In light of your record of making controversial statements and taking extreme positions, the question is really whether these views will seep into your decisions as a 5th Circuit judge,” said Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), running through Wilson’s positions on all of those issues. “Common sense would say, yes indeed, these views will seep into your decision-making as a judge. And that is why you are being nominated.”