TomPaine.com

The Filibuster Fig Leaf

Marc Morial

May 20, 2005

Marc Morial is the president of the National Urban League .

Proponents pushing the current effort to eliminate the 60-vote filibuster for judicial nominations in the Senate have sought to cloak their claims with references to the historic civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s. But, as the president and CEO of the National Urban League, one of the nation’s oldest and most respected civil rights organizations, I say to America: Don’t believe the hype! 

The filibuster, despite its checkered past, was and remains an important tool to protect the rights of the minority party, whether Democratic or Republican—and it’s one of the things that make the Senate the greatest deliberative body in the world.  Yes, the filibuster was used to temporarily thwart civil rights legislation—as when Sen. Strom Thurmond staged the longest filibuster in Senate history in 1957.

But that obstructionism was overcome by the bipartisan effort to ensure that all Americans should enjoy full rights of citizenship. When the Senate’s rules made achieving the goals of the civil rights movement tougher, civil rights advocates didn’t propose throwing out the rules to get their way. They just worked harder with Senate giants like Everett Dirksen, the Illinois Republican, and Lyndon Johnson, the Texas Democrat, to win the old fashioned way: by earning it honestly.

How many of the Senators who now claim that the “nuclear option” is a blow for civil rights demanded an up-or-down vote on the 2004 Fairness Act, one of the most important pieces of civil rights legislation in years? The Fairness Act—which would have guaranteed equal access to publicly-funded services, protection for older workers, remedies for on-the-job discrimination, and equal pay for women in the workforce—languished and eventually died in the Senate, the victim of the leadership’s failure to allow a vote. And now, some seek to discard a time-tested Senate tradition and principle of democracy in order to promote judges with a proven hostility toward civil rights.

One such judge is Terrence Boyle of North Carolina. Not only has Judge Boyle demonstrated an antagonism toward civil rights and an unwillingness to follow the law—his rulings have been reversed more than 150 times—but his own nomination was possible only because Sen. Jesse Helms exercised his own personal filibuster to prevent the integration of the previously all-white Fourth Circuit.

For years, Sen. Helms single-handedly blocked several highly qualified nominees from North Carolina—including a woman and three African-Americans. Not one of these nominees ever got a vote from the Senate. As a result, the seat remained open for more than six years—long enough for Helms’ hand-picked protégé to fill it.

Polls show a majority of the American people understand that a wrong is being proposed here. A recent national survey found that nearly 7 in 10 Americans are opposed to eliminating the filibuster, including many of those who support the judges in question. They understand that the filibuster is meant to protect the rights of both political parties. They realize that to throw over a two centuries-old tradition of protecting the rights of the minority in a democracy for short term political game is shortsighted to the extreme.

My hope is that Senate leaders will listen to the echoes of history and jettison the nuclear option so that Congress can get back to the issues America is most concerned about. Secondly my hope is, as this debate continues, those invoking the great civil rights struggles of the last century will realize their arguments fly in the face of the courage shown by its leaders. They understood the value of tradition and what traditions were worth keeping, even when they momentarily seemed to be obstacles. Those leaders also had enough faith in their own cause to depend for its success upon the intelligence, decency and will of the American people.