On 11/30/3033, Sen. John Kennedy, R-Louisiana found an article written by Judge Rita F. Lin in college in which the nominee described “the problem with the Christian coalition” is that “they are bigots.” Kennedy pointed out that she once claimed “the Christian coalition” is full of bigots.
“You wrote an article in December of 1998, entitled ‘Person of Faith: Race and Religion as Experiential Knowledge.’ You wrote it in a journal called ‘Perspective,’” Sen. Kennedy said to Lin Wednesday. “And this is what you said, I quote – your words not mine: ‘The problem with the Christian coalition is not that they are bible thumpers (there are personal beliefs that often result from religious experiences) but that they are bigots.’”
“I believe you did,” Lin responded.
“Did you write that?” Kennedy then asked.
“I did write that when I was 20-years-old,” she conceded. “I do want to be clear, I do not agree with that today. I wrote that before I went to law school, before I had any kind of professional career.”
But Kennedy questioned her justification, arguing she was in her third year at Harvard at the time it was written.
“You were a grown woman when you wrote this,” Kennedy said. “You were a junior at Harvard. So you were three-quarters of the way through your education. Wow.”
“It was 20 years before I became a judge and I do not believe it now,” she said.
Judge Rita F. Lin, nominated for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, currently sits on the Superior Court of San Francisco, California. Prior to joining the bench, she was a partner at Morrison & Foerster, and later served as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California for four years. If confirmed, Lin would be the first Chinese American woman to serve on the Northern District of California’s bench. In 2018, Lin served as a judge for the San Francisco County Superior Court after being appointed by then-Governor Jerry Brown. She also spent time working as an attorney following law school.
She was born in Oakland, California and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 2000 and Harvard Law School in 2003.
With only weeks remaining in the 117th Congress, and power in the House of Representatives set to flip from the Democrats to Republicans, the Senate Judiciary Committee continued President Joe Biden’s judicial nomination streak, though the sparsely attended hearing offered few fireworks.
San Diego County Superior Court Judge James Edward Simmons Jr. was nominated for a seat at the Southern District of California. He’s been in the state court bench since 2017 and worked in the county’s DA office for more than a decade before then. Kennedy questioned Simmons’s experience as Federal Judge.
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Kennedy: You were a grown woman; SF Judge: I do not believe it now, I wrote that when I was 20 yrs old