Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell isn’t just saying no to President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee.
On Friday, McConnell also refused to consider Obama’s nomination of Kentucky Supreme Court Justice Lisabeth Tabor Hughes to the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
McConnell, a Kentucky Republican who’s one of the president’s chief antagonists on Capitol Hill, said Obama did not consult him before submitting the nomination late Thursday.
On Wednesday, McConnell said he would not schedule a hearing or even meet with Merrick Garland, the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, who is Obama’s choice to succeed the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
Within hours of Scalia’s death last month, McConnell said the next president should be able to choose a new justice for the court.
In January, the conservative Heritage Foundation urged lawmakers not to confirm any more of Obama’s judicial nominees.
48 Nominees to federal courts await Senate confirmation.
With only 10 months left in Obama’s second term, the Senate has a backlog of federal court appointees awaiting confirmation.
The 48 nominees pending include 33 district judges and six appeals court judges. Several of those nominees have been waiting more than a year for confirmation.
Hughes, a native of western Kentucky who’s a 1980 graduate of the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law, has served on Kentucky’s highest court since 2007.
“Justice Lisabeth Tabor Hughes has a long and impressive record of service and a history of handing down fair and judicious decisions,” Obama said in a statement Thursday. “She will be a thoughtful and distinguished addition to the 6th Circuit, and I am extremely pleased to put her forward.”
According to the National Women’s Law Center, Obama has appointed 134 women to the federal bench, more than any other president.
Curtis Tate: 202-383-6018, @tatecurtis