thomas farr

open lte usual suspect?

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5703586-Letter-to-Tim-Scott-defending-Thomas-Farr

We support Tom Farr and we are asking you to do likewise. Thank you. Sincerely,

The Honorable Edwin Meese III United States Attorney General (1985-1988)

The Honorable Jim DeMint Member, South Carolina United States Senate (2005-2013)

The Honorable Tim Scott January 29, 2019 The Honorable Tim Moore Speaker, North Carolina House of Representatives

The Honorable Jason Saine Member, North Carolina House of Representatives Senior Chair, NC House Committee on Appropriations Immediate Past National Chairman, American Legislative Exchange Council The Honorable Robin Hayes Chairman, North Carolina Republican Party Member of Congress from North Carolina (1999-2009) Tom Fetzer Mayor of Raleigh, NC (1993-1999) Former Chairman, North Carolina Republican Party Friend of Tom Farr since 1981 Dallas Woodhouse, Executive Director North Carolina Republican Party

Cleta MitchellPartner, Foley & Lardner, LLP Chairman, Public Interest Legal FoundationHon. Hans A. von SpakovskyCommissioner, Federal Election Commission (2006-2007) Counsel to the Asst. Attorney General for Civil Rights, U.S. Dept. of Justice (2002-2005) J. Christian Adams President and General Counsel, Public Interest Legal Foundation US Department of Justice, Trial Attorney, Civil Rights DivisionGinni Thomas President, Liberty Consulting Chairman, GroundswellWashington, DC

Barbara Ledeen Judicial Nominations expert

Marjorie Dannenfelser, President Susan B. Anthony List

Jenny Beth Martin, Chairman Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund:{

The Honorable Tim Scott January 29, 2019 Richard Manning, President Americans for Limited Government Phillip L. JaureguiPresident Judicial Action Group The Honorable Becky Norton DunlopWhite House Advisor President Ronald Reagan (1981-1985) The Honorable George K. Rasley, Jr. Managing Editor, ConservativeHQ.com The Honorable J. Kenneth Blackwell, ChairmanConstitutional Congress, Inc.

The Honorable George Dunlop Legislative Assistant (and other positions) with Senator Jesse Helms (1972-1993)

The Honorable Joseph A. Morris, Partner Morris & De La Rosa, Chicago Assistant Attorney General of the United States (1986-1988) General Counsel, Office of Personnel Management (1981-1986) Raymond LaJeunesse, Jr. Vice-President & Legal Director National Right to Work Committee

:{The Honorable T. Kenneth Cribb, Jr. Chief Domestic Advisor President Ronald Reagan (1987-1988) Spartanburg, South Carolina Curt Levey, President Committee for Justice Washington, DC Wilma Hall, Retired Becky Gerritson, Executive Director Eagle Forum of Alabama

The Honorable Tim Scott January 29, 2019 Brian Brown, President National Organization for Marriage Susan Carlson, President American Civil Rights Union

Sandy Rios Director of Governmental Affairs, American Family Association

Host, Sandy Rios in the Morning on AFR Talk

William R. Davis, Esq. Partner, Foley & Lardner, LLP Member of the Board of Directors Public Interest Legal Foundation

Dr. John C. Eastman Henry Salvatori Professor of Law & Community Service Dale E. Fowler School of Law at Chapman University Orange, CA

yikes

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/trump-packing-courts-unqualified-conservatives

Many of Trump’s appointees have drawn scrutiny, including Leonard Grasz, who was the Senate—who the Senate confirmed earlier this month to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals despite a “not qualified” rating from the American Bar Association. Grasz is one of at least four Trump nominees the ABA deemed “not qualified.” Meanwhile, Trump’s nominee to a lifetime appointment on the U.S. District Court in Washington withdrew from consideration, after widely circulated video showed he was unable to answer basic questions about the law and had never tried a case in court. This is Louisiana Republican John Kennedy questioning Matthew Petersen at a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing earlier this month.

...AMY GOODMAN: In today’s New York Times, Reverend Bishop William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, wrote about Trump’s nomination of Thomas Alvin Farr, a protégé of Senator Jesse Helms, to serve on the U.S. district court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. Barber writes about Farr’s connections to white supremacist causes and writes, quote, “Mr. Farr’s former law partner, Thomas Ellis, was Mr. Helms’s top deputy for decades. He also served as a director of the Nazi-inspired, pro-eugenics Pioneer Fund and used funding from that organization to create and bankroll a network of interlocking organizations to support Mr. Helms and other political candidates who espoused the notion of a superior white race and opposed civil rights.”

...

Now, those are the words of William Barber, the well-known civil rights activist. Judge Scheindlin, can you talk about Mr. Farr and the significance of his—Trump’s choice?

SHIRA SCHEINDLIN: Well, I can a little bit. I wrote about Mr. Farr also in my New York Times op-ed, but in a much-reduced fashion, because I wrote about four nominees rather than one. And I pointed out many of the same things. But one fact that I also pointed out is that President Bush had nominated Mr. Farr in 2006, but he didn’t go through. I mean, then, even then, that Congress said, “No way. This person should not be on the federal bench.” Now he comes back, redux—what is it?—12 years later, and suddenly he’s going to be acceptable.

Now, what has changed? What has changed is we don’t have the filibuster rule. This is very important to explain. It used to take 60 votes, but now it takes only a bare majority. Now, that changed under the Democrats in 2013, but they had to do it. They had to use that nuclear option, because their picks were being blocked in the Senate. And while they knew they did that at their own peril, that it would come back to haunt them, there are many who believe, even if they hadn’t done it, it would be done now. The Republicans would do the same thing. So, six of the Trump judges have already been confirmed with far less than 60 votes. They would never have been confirmed before. And that’s going to happen with Farr, if he’s confirmed.

Now, the other thing I would say about Farr is that it’s a district court nominee. That’s the lowest court. That’s the trial court. Thankfully, right now, he’s not being nominated for an appellate court. But it wouldn’t surprise me, if he is confirmed, in the next two, three years, they’ll put him up for the circuit court. I have no doubt about that. This is a person who does not belong on the federal bench. His views are unacceptable to the vast majority of Americans. That’s the problem with the Trump picks. They’re simply not mainstream people. They are extremists. And this man is an extremist who doesn’t belong on the federal bench, does not understand fairness and justice. And he’ll turn the clock back. He was a great supporter of North Carolina’s voter suppression law, which the circuit reversed and said it targeted, with almost surgical precision, against black voters. So this is a dangerous person to put on the bench.

refs slate

Former Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) participated in a how-to-gerrymander training for right-wing lawmakers in August.

For years, corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has been the place where right-wing state lawmakers and corporate lobbyists go to conspire in secret. But thanks to Slate, the leaked audio from a recent session on how to get away with gerrymandering has been made public.

The presentation was moderated by voter suppression advocate Cleta Mitchell and featured voter fraud conspiracy theorist Hans von Spakovsky, unsuccessful Trump judicial nominee and alleged white supremacist Thomas Farr, former Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA), and Texas state Rep. Phil King (R). Their focus was on teaching the 1,413 attendees that gerrymandering is a "political adult blood sport" and that those doing it should pretend to be transparent but destroy the real evidence of how they devise maps.

Mitchell warned that since Republican lawmakers devising maps to overrepresent their share of the population were likely to be sued, they should not keep anything incriminating.

"My advice to you is: If you don’t want it turned over in discovery, you probably ought to get rid of it before you go home," Mitchell said.

But perhaps most shocking were the comments from Westmoreland, who represented Georgia in Congress from 2005 to 2017. Before that, he served as Republican leader in the Georgia House of Representatives, where he opposed gerrymandering by the Democratic majority in 2001.

When Westmoreland went to the House of Representatives in 2005, he pushed Georgia Republicans — who has regained control of the state legislature in the 2004 election — to ram through a controversial mid-decade redistricting plan.

Westmoreland bragged that he expressly tricked Democratic lawmakers in the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus into undermining their own interests.

In 2010, he recalled, he co-chaired a GOP gerrymandering effort called called "REDMAP" and relied on a map-making computer system. He invited black Democrats in Georgia to try the software to devise "perfect districts" that packed in the most minority voters possible and left neighboring districts more Republican. Then he would use these racially packed districts in the redistricting.

According to the Slate article:

Westmoreland recalled inviting the members of the "black caucus" to his office, "off campus," to create their "perfect map." One incumbent, he said, "finally fell into the trap and came over there and drew his perfect district." To show the redistricting plan benefited black Democrats too, he "immediately got the local paper down there" to run an article on that lawmaker’s perfect district. Westmoreland then included a district as close as possible to that overwhelmingly black and Democratic one in the state’s official map. The legislator, he said, voted against the map and soon lost his seat.

"I promise you it’ll be beneficial to you," he told the ALEC attendees. "They still want to be reelected. They still want to have the best district they can have."

Dan Vicuña, Common Cause's national redistricting manager, said Wednesday that this is "about as clear an example as you can have" of illegal racial gerrymandering without having a court trial.

Noting that the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that race-based gerrymanders like the ones Westmoreland described are unconstitutional, violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as well as Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, he observed that Westmoreland effectively admitted to illegal activity.

"You've got clear admission by a Republican leader of conspiring with sitting legislators to pack black voters into as few districts as possible to ensure white dominance of the rest of the state," he said. "If that's not illegal racial gerrymandering, I don't know what is."

The Center for Constitutional Rights, a progressive watchdog group, helped sound the alarm about two ALEC gerrymandering panels before they took place at the August conference.

In an interview on Wednesday, the group's advocacy program manager, Dominic Renfrey, said the leaked audio confirmed "the suspicions that activists have had for years that ALEC is a bootcamp for corporate executives and conservative lawmakers determined to rig the system in their favor."

He added that Westmoreland's admissions are "just as shocking as can be."

"ALEC has been the platform for the development and passage into law of many initiatives over the years that have directly attacked black and brown communities," Renfrey said, pointing to model legislation like so-called "Stand Your Ground" laws and voter ID requirements. "This initiative, with this recording, doesn't seem to be changing that trajectory for ALEC."

Vicuña noted that the leaked audio is "important evidence of a process gone terribly wrong."

"There is a public process for show," he added, "a dog-and-pony show where legislators with serious looks on their faces are accepting public testimony — and then they go back to smoke filled rooms ... and devise legislative districts to advantage themselves."

Patrick Rodenbush, communications director for the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said in an email that the audio should be a "wake-up call."

"Republicans are plotting behind closed doors to ensure they can manipulate the redistricting process in 2021 to lock in power in state legislatures and congressional delegations across the country," he wrote. "If we don’t win back power at the state and local level over the next couple of years, the next Democratic president will have her (or his) agenda hobbled by a gerrymandered House of Representatives and conservative state legislatures around the country."

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

spitfire extensive on gerry

https://spitfirelist.com/news/john-roberts-gives-bad-faith-blessing-to-hyper-partisan-gerrymandering-and-paved-the-way-for-the-kochstitution/comment-page-1/

...here was a recent article in Slate about a audio recording leaked from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) annual meeting this year. The audio was of the closed-door “How to Survive Redistricting” panel discussion, so this was a panel that’s particularly important for understanding what the GOP has in mind for its 2021 hyper-gerrymandering schemes. The panel’s advice included helpful tips like destroying evidence under the expectation that the district maps they draw up are guaranteed to end up challenged in court. The evidence they recommended attendees destroy included evidence they had attended this panel discussion. It’s that kind of panel discussion.

the panel had four experts: North Carolina election lawyer Thomas Farr, former Georgia Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (who co-chaired Project REDMAP in 2010), Texas state Rep. Phil King, and Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation who happens to be one of the GOP’s biggest backers of voter suppression schemes. In particular, von Spakovsky has specialized in issuing fraudulent warnings about illegal immigrants voting in US elections and using those scare stories as justification for voter suppression laws. Von Spakovsky was also on Trump’s short-lived presidential commission aimed at uncovering proof of this alleged rampant voter fraud. In keep with this theme of whipping up fears about immigrants, von Spakovksy has been one of the chief advocates for using only population based on citizenship, and not the total number of people in a state, for redistricting purposes during the 2021 redistricting process.

And that’s all what makes the discovery that Hans von Spakovsky is leading the GOP’s 2021 gerrymandering schemes one of those ‘of course’ revelations, because of course we’re going to find that the same people behind the GOP’s voter suppression drive are also be behind the GOP’s hyper-gerrymandering operations too. It’s all part of the same ‘legalized cheating’ electoral agenda. A legalized cheating agenda that requires the preemptive destruction of evidence of plans of this agenda:

Slate

How to Get Away With Gerrymandering

A leaked audio recording reveals how state lawmakers are taught to trash evidence, avoid the word gerrymander, and create an appearance of bipartisanship.

By David Daley

Oct 02, 2019 ...

https://documented.net/investigations/exclusive-documented-obtains-recording-of-3-hour-long-voter-suppression-strategy-session-hosted-by-alec

https://slate.com/news-and-politics**/2019/10/**alec-meeting-gerrymandering-audio-recording.html

slate no lnx audio

luxury cabanas atop Austin’s JW Marriott kept state legislators cool poolside as August-in-Texas temperatures soared above 103 degrees during each day of the American Legislative Exchange Council’s 2019 annual meeting. The gathered Republican officials could enjoy a $14 rooftop Peppered Paloma cocktail with Patrón silver, housemade grapefruit poblano soda, and Chilean salt, all while gazing over Lady Bird Lake and the nearby state Capitol, or catching a ballgame on the cabana’s 55-inch private TV.

Downstairs, meanwhile, five of the GOP’s most seasoned redistricting minds and über-lawyers would teach them the finer points of tilting maps and drawing districts that would allow them to retain such spoils for another decade.

Slate has obtained an exclusive audio recording of the closed-door panel called “How to Survive Redistricting,” moderated by influential Republican lawyer Cleta Mitchell. The panel’s four experts—Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation, North Carolina election lawyer Thomas Farr, former Georgia Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, and Texas state Rep. Phil King—are among the architects and defenders of some of the most notorious gerrymanders and voter suppression plans of this decade.

During the session, the legislators were advised to treat redistricting as “political adult blood sport,” trash potential evidence before it can be discovered through litigation, avoid the word gerrymander, and make deals with black and Latino legislators that guarantee them easy reelections by packing as many minority voters as possible into their districts, thereby making the rest of the map whiter and more conservative.

“You are going to be sued. Let’s start with that.” — Cleta Mitchell

Panelists offered complicated technical advice, such as adding a legal provision that would allow a legislature to defend its maps in court even if the state attorney general refuses. And then there was less-technical advice, like being sure to put “sharp” legislators on redistricting committees because they’ll spend a lot of time explaining the maps in court.

“You are going to be sued. Let’s start with that,” Mitchell told a packed room at the ALEC gathering, attended by more than 1,400 people, including Trump administration officials and top conservative lawmakers, thinkers, donors, and activists.Mitchell made light of ALEC’s reputation as a conveyor belt for cookie-cutter conservative legislation enacted by state after state. “Mindless state legislators, we’re just pouring in information and we’re indoctrinating you, pouring into your empty skulls!” she said, sarcastically. “We’re going to teach you how to gerrymander.”:{

}::{:{

And then she did.}: “Let us begin with the fact that, probably, your notes from this conference, and this workshop, will probably be part of a discovery demand,” Mitchell said on the recording, dropping the sarcasm. “My advice to you is: If you don’t want it turned over in discovery, you probably ought to get rid of it before you go home.”}:

View Transcript

Farr, the veteran North Carolina election lawyer whose nomination to the federal bench in North Carolina ended amid persistent allegations that he had defended efforts to suppress the black vote, compared lawsuits against GOP redistricting plans to a cancer diagnosis. “You better get some chemotherapy,” he said, “because if you don’t, things aren’t going to turn out real well for you.” He also told legislators that they needed to think about any trial as a play that he would direct as the counsel, and to be sure that they created a script that an attorney could work with before a judge.

Westmoreland, the former Georgia congressman who co-chaired a Republican 2010 redistricting initiative called REDMAP, told a story about giving black Democrats in his state mapmaking software and encouraging them to draw their “perfect district,” knowing that districts filled with minority voters would make surrounding districts whiter and more Republican.

:{“We ended up being very successful with it,” Westmoreland said.

Westmoreland recalled inviting the members of the “black caucus” to his office, “off campus,” to create their “perfect map.” One incumbent, he said, “finally fell into the trap and came over there and drew his perfect district.” To show the redistricting plan benefited black Democrats too, he “immediately got the local paper down there” to run an article on that lawmaker’s perfect district. Westmoreland then included a district as close as possible to that overwhelmingly black and Democratic one in the state’s official map. The legislator, he said, voted against the map and soon lost his seat.}:

“I promise you it’ll be beneficial to you,” he told the ALEC attendees. “They still want to be reelected. They still want to have the best district they can have.”

View Transcript

The speakers repeatedly insisted that there is no such thing as a nonpartisan redistricting process. Farr argued that maps can never be neutral. “Every time you draw a districting line, it benefits one party and hurts the other party,” he said.

The idea that Republicans are simply fighting similarly skewed Democratic gerrymanders has been debunked}:. According to a University of Southern California study, 59 million Americans live in states where at least one chamber of the state legislature is controlled by the party that won fewer votes in 2018. In every case, Republicans drew the lines, and hold minority control. That the process is inherently political has been disproved as well: Several states, including California, Iowa, and New Jersey, use independent commissions or various neutral or bipartisan processes that have successfully created fairer and more competitive maps. Three-quarters of the seats that flipped during the 2018 U.S. House elections were drawn by commissions or courts. Studies show that maps become more representative and equitable when more parties have a seat at the table.

Nevertheless, Farr urged these lawmakers to make their processes appear as open as possible, even though they are driven by partisanship behind closed doors.

The legislative record, he told them, must appear to be business as usual, following every statute, with every transcript and debate filed for the record.

Given that every map could end up in court, Farr advised extraordinary caution. “You never know what you might say, even if it’s unjust, that the left can take out of context and try to use to make the Republicans look like they’re evil.”

Then, in court, Farr could take it from there.}:

“It’s like I’m a director of a play,” he explained to the room. “I know what I want the play to look like for the judges when we actually have to go and defend what we’ve done in court, and so this is why you want to make it look like—I know most of you know this already—you’re very cordial, cooperative with the minority party or the opposing party. … The more you take the high road in the legislative process, the better it’s going to look in court when you have to defend what you’ve done.”

View Transcript

Republicans, Farr suggested, are outgunned by the litigation power and the expert witnesses on the side of fair maps. He complained that Republicans have only five or six expert witnesses, while Democrats have between 18 and 20 “really outstanding and smart people” able to explain “newfangled theories” about identifying gerrymanders.

Many of those expert witnesses create tens of thousands of neutral maps using nonpartisan, legal redistricting criteria. Courts in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Ohio were all persuaded to overturn maps as partisan gerrymanders by relying, in part, on simulated maps that demonstrate that the ones drawn by legislators are wild partisan outliers. This technological advancement offers the potential of using the same technology that partisans use to rig maps to strip their intent bare. For Farr, this is a great threat. He warned the legislators that computer-assisted maps would be the tactic deployed against their maps as partisan gerrymandering moves to state courts during the upcoming 2020 redistricting cycle—and that he would help them defeat those maps.

“Garbage in and garbage out,” he said. “You can read these things to get the results that you want.” Farr said that the professors working on these simulated maps were “very smart” and that the work is “very complex.” “You’ve got to get the right experts to look at their algorithm and all the backup that they have. But there’s a definite way to defeat the concept of computer-simulated maps.”

View Transcript

As Farr and Westmoreland taught lawmakers to conceal the true intent of their maps and appear to play by the rules, Von Spakovsky envisioned a longer game to change the rules of redistricting entirely.

Von Spakovsky, a member of the Trump-Kobach “election fraud” commission,urged GOP lawmakers to use citizenship data to redistrict state legislatures rather than count the total populations of districts, the latter being the constitutional standard for U.S. House districts and the longtime norm for states, as well. Most state legislatures, however, could redistrict state legislative lines based on citizen population, in most cases simply by passing a statute. (Recent revelations from the files of late GOP redistricting mastermind Thomas Hofeller demonstrated that Republicans attempted to place a citizenship question on the 2020 census to gather citizenship data for this purpose.)

“All of you need to seriously consider switching to using citizen population to do redistricting,” he said, asserting that the concept of “one person, one vote” was just something that liberal justices on the U.S. Supreme Court “created … out of whole cloth.”

Von Spakovsky also told lawmakers that census data is important for two reasons: the apportionment of U.S. House seats, and state and federal redistricting. Congressional apportionment based on total population, as the Constitution mandates, is “fundamentally unfair,” he said, because “states with large numbers of aliens, particularly illegal aliens, are getting more political power.”

“Liberals do not want you doing this,” he said, because “the higher the number of noncitizens in a district, the greater the chances they’re going to vote for a liberal.”

View Transcript

Von Spakovsky also praised Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority, 5–4 opinion earlier this year in Rucho v. Common Cause,which essentially closed the federal courts to partisan gerrymandering claims. But he warned that other legal avenues are still open to proponents of fair maps. “What you have to understand is this is not the end of this,” he said.

Gerrymandered maps could get challenged under state constitutions as a political question, he said, or in federal courts for unconstitutional use of race data and for diluting the votes of minorities contrary to Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. He called this “the Goldilocks principle of redistricting,” noting that “you can’t use too much race,” but if you don’t use race at all, “Hispanics, African Americans are going to claim you didn’t create a district in which they can elect a candidate of their choice.”

To withstand these inevitable legal challenges, the panelists said, it is important to control not only legislative majorities but also the judges approving or rejecting redistricting plans.

“Always know who’s going to end up ruling on your maps,” Westmoreland, the Georgia lawmaker, advised. “It’s important to work with the judges, the judicial system. You need to work for your attorney generals. … You need to work with as many organizations that you can to make sure that not only you win the majority, but that you elect people that are going to be able to supervise what these maps, or what you, come up with.”

Enticing more “dance partners” from minority groups to protect their own seats is another key part of that plan.

“It’s not rocket science,” Westmoreland said. “It’s politics.”

Read the full transcript of the ALEC meeting here.

This story is part of Slate’s Who Counts? project, which investigates who has decision-making power in America and what happens to those who don’t. Read more from Dahlia

wiki 7 22

thomas Alvin Farr (born October 24, 1954)^[1] is an American attorney. Farr was nominated by President Donald Trump for a judgeship on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina in 2017, and again in 2018. Farr was considered a controversial^[2] nominee due to his alleged involvement in suppression of African-American voters.^[3][4] On November 29, 2018, Republican U.S. Senators Jeff Flake and Tim Scott announced their opposition to Farr's nomination, together with unanimous opposition of Senate Democrats, made it impossible for Farr's nomination to be confirmed.

Early life and education

Farr was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Liberal Studies, summa cum laude, fromHillsdale College, where he was co-salutatorian.He received his Juris Doctor from the Emory University School of Law and a Master of Laws in labor law from the Georgetown Law.

Career

After graduating from law school, Farr served as a law clerk to Judge Frank William Bullock Jr. of the United States District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina. Prior to entering private practice, he was an attorney with the N:{ational Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: and counsel to the United States Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources. He is currently a shareholder in the Raleigh office of Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, P.C. where his practice focuses on employment matters and constitutional law.^[5][]

Farr is considered an expert in the field of gerrymandering and has spoken at ALEC on the subject.^[6] Farr has been a member of the Federalist Society since 1985.^[7]

North Carolina racial voter suppression

Farr has been accused of voter suppression towards African-American voters.^[3][8] In November 2018, Republican Senator Tim Scott opposed Farr's nomination for a federal judgeship, citing a 1991 DOJ memo on Farr's involvement in the 1984 Jesse Helms campaign's alleged voter suppression against African-Americans.^[2][9]

North Carolina voter ID law

In 2010, Farr advised the North Carolina General Assembly in what federal courts termed a "racial gerrymander" of the state's voting districts.^[10] Farr was involved with drafting the 2013 North Carolina voter I.D. law and helped legislators evaluate racial data requested from the North Carolina DMV, which showed that black voters disproportionately lacked driver's licenses.^[11][12][13] The DMV data also "revealed that African Americans disproportionately used early voting, same-day registration, and out-of-precinct voting", all of which were curtailed by the law, while absentee voting, disproportionately used by white voters, was exempted from the voter ID requirements.^[14] Farr defended the voting restrictions in court before the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.The appeals court struck down the law, writing that the law targeted African Americans "with almost surgical precision."^[15][16]

Farr represented Republican state legislators in lawsuits related to redistricting and voter identification changes which were struck down by a court as racially biased.^[17][15] Newsweek described Farr as having a "history of working on voter suppression...part of a wider Republican effort that critics say disenfranchises African-Americans and the poor."^[18]

Jesse Helms campaigns

In 1984, Farr was involved in the Jesse Helms Senate campaign. A 1991 memo from the Department of Justice under the George H.W. Bush administration stated that "Farr was the primary coordinator of the 1984 'ballot security' programconducted by the NCGOP and 1984 Helms for Senate Committee. He coordinated several 'ballot security' activities in 1984, including a postcard mailing to voters in predominantly black precincts which was designed to serve as a basis to challenge voters on election day."^[3][4]: 12

Hebert's notes documenting Farr's participation in a planning meeting prior to the postcard mailing.

In 1990, Farr served as the lead legal counsel on Jesse Helms' campaign. The campaign mailed two batches of postcards, totaling about 124,000, "virtually exclusively to black voters"^[4]: 4 warning "that residency requirements were strict and vote fraud was punishable by imprisonment." The first batch was sent "exclusively to the black voters who had a change of address associated with their name",^[4]: 36 while the recipients of the second batch were 93.1% African-American.^[4]: 38

The DOJ sued Helms, saying that the mailers were intended to intimidate African-Americans from voting. As the campaign's legal counsel, Farr defended Helms in the DOJ lawsuit. Farr himself "denied any role in drafting the postcards and said he did not know about them until after the mailers were sent" and was "'appalled' when he found out about them."^{[18][19][20][21]} Gerald Hebert, a former Department of Justice investigator, contradicted Farr's denial, stating that according to "contemporaneous handwritten notes", Farr partook in a meeting planning the postcards.^{[22][23][13][16]} The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and the **NAACP Legal Defense** and Educational Fund called upon the Senate to further question Farr about his apparent lack of candor.^{[22][24][25][26]}Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah and a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called the criticisms of Farr “utterly false character assassination nonsense.”^[27]

Federal judicial nominations

Farr was nominated to a federal judgeship in both 2006 and 2007 by George W. Bush, but he never received a vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee.^[28]

On July 13, 2017, President Trump nominated Farr to serve as a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina.^[29] Farr was nominated to fill the seat vacated by Judge Malcolm Jones Howard, who took senior status on December 31, 2005.^[] On September 20, 2017, a hearing on his nomination was held before the Senate Judiciary Committee.^[30] On October 19, 2017,his nomination was reported out of committee by a party-line vote of 11–9.^[31] On January 3, 2018, Farr's nomination was returned to the President under :{Rule XXXI,:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: Paragraph 6 of the United States Senate.^[32]

Senator Cory Booker at a protest opposing Trump's nomination of Farr in 2018.

On January 5, 2018, President Trump announced his intent to renominate Farr to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina.^[33] On January 8, 2018, his renomination was sent to the Senate.^[34] Farr was unanimously rated as "well qualified" by the American Bar Association.^[35][36] On January 18, 2018, his nomination was reported out of committee by an 11–10 vote.^[37]

Farr's nomination was opposed by the Congressional Black Caucus due to Farr's role as a lawyer defending North Carolina voting restrictions which were struck down by a court as racially biased. During his Senate confirmation hearing, Farr said that he disagreed with the Fourth Circuit panel's ruling and that "at the time our clients enacted those laws, I do not believe that they thought that were purposefully discriminating against African Americans." He added that if he were confirmed to the federal judiciary, he would follow the Fourth Circuit's ruling.^[17][15]

On November 28, 2018, the United States Senate voted 51–50 in favor of cloture on Farr's nomination, with Vice President Mike Pence casting the tie-breaking vote.^[38] The following day, Republican Senators Jeff Flake of Arizona and Tim Scott of South Carolina affirmed their opposition to Farr's nomination; with all 49 Democratic Senators opposed as well, the opposition from Flake and Scott all but assured that his nomination would be rejected.^[3][27]

On January 3, 2019, his nomination was returned to the President under Rule XXXI, Paragraph 6 of the United States Senate.

References

"Attorney Thomas A Farr – Lawyer in Greenville SC". www.lawyercentral.com. Retrieved December 4, 2018.

Kim, Seung Min; Wagner, John (November 29, 2018). "Republican Sen. Tim Scott says he will block confirmation of Trump judicial nominee amid racial controversy". The Washington Post. Retrieved November 30, 2018.

Dumain, Emma; Murphy, Brian (November 29, 2018). "Scott to oppose Farr nomination to federal bench in NC, ending chances of confirmation". The State. Retrieved November 29, 2018.

Dunne, John R.; Rubin, Lee H. (June 19, 1991). Recommended lawsuit against North Carolina Republican Party, Helms for Senate Committee, et al. under 42 U.S.C. 1971(b) and 42 U.S.C.1973i(b). Civil Rights Division (Report). United States Department of Justice. Retrieved December 9, 2018 – via The Washington Post.

"President Donald J. Trump Announces Fifth Wave of Judicial Candidates". whitehouse.gov (Press release). July 13, 2017. Retrieved December 4, 2018 – via National Archives.

Daley, David (October 2, 2019). "How to Get Away With Gerrymandering: A leaked audio recording reveals how state lawmakers are taught to trash evidence, avoid the word gerrymander, and create an appearance of bipartisanship". Slate.com. Retrieved October 9, 2019.

"United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary: Questionnaire for Judicial Nominees: Thomas Alvin Farr" (PDF).

Edmondson, Catie (November 27, 2018). "Democrats Try to Derail Judicial Nominee They Call a Vote Suppressor". The New York Times. Retrieved November 30, 2018.

Taylor, Jessica; Snell, Kelsey (November 29, 2018). "Trump Judicial Nominee Set To Fail Amid Voter Suppression Charges". NPR. Retrieved November 30, 2018.

Sullivan, Sean (November 28, 2018). "Trump judicial nominee Thomas Farr advances in Senate amid racially charged controversy". Washington Post. Retrieved November 29, 2018.

Rutenberg, Jim (July 29, 2015). "A Dream Undone". The New York Times Magazine. Retrieved December 6, 2018.

"North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP v. McCrory". Harvard Law Review. April 10, 2017. Retrieved December 6, 2018.

Corriher, Billy; Jawando, Michele L. (November 8, 2017). "Senate Rushing to Confirm Trump Judges Who Back Voter Suppression". Center for American Progress. Retrieved December 6, 2018.

NC State Conference of NAACP v. McCrory, 831 F.3d (United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit July 29, 2016) ("This data revealed that African Americans disproportionately used early voting, same-day registration, and out-of-precinct voting, and disproportionately lacked DMV-issued ID... Not only that, it also revealed that African Americans did not disproportionately use absentee voting; whites did... SL 2013-381 drastically restricted all of these other forms of access to the franchise, but exempted absentee voting from the photo ID requirement.").

"Judicial Nominee: I'll Follow North Carolina Voter ID Ruling". WUNC. Associated Press. September 21, 2017. Retrieved October 19, 2017.

Amend, Alex (December 4, 2017). "From eugenics to voter ID laws: Thomas Farr's connections to the Pioneer Fund". Hatewatch. Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved January 15, 2018.

Blythe, Anne (September 21, 2017). "Trump pick for NC judge accused of 'hostile record on African-American voting rights and workers' rights'". The Charlotte Observer. Retrieved October 19, 2017.

Nazaryan, Alexander (September 21, 2017). "President Trump Is Rewarding A Lawyer Who Has Fought To Block The Black Vote With A Plum Federal Judgeship". Newsweek. Retrieved January 15, 2018.

Kim, Seung Min; Wagner, John (November 27, 2018). "Fate of divisive judicial nominee from North Carolina uncertain amid criticism". The Washington Post. Retrieved November 29, 2018.

Kragie, Andrew (November 29, 2018). "The Long, Bitter Fight Over Thomas Farr". The Atlantic. Retrieved November 29, 2018.

Goldsmith, Thomas (November 22, 2017). "Thomas Farr May Have Known More About Jesse Helms's Voter-Suppression Tactics Than He Let On. Should That Cost Him a Federal Judgeship?". Indy Week. Retrieved August 12, 2020.

Levine, Sam (November 21, 2017). "Former DOJ Official Accuses Trump Judicial Pick Of Misleading Senate About Past Work". Huffington Post. Retrieved January 9, 2019.

Goldsmith, Thomas (November 15, 2017). "Did Former Helms Lawyer Thomas Farr Lie to the Senate Judiciary Committee? It Sure Looks That Way". Indy Week. Retrieved December 6, 2018.

"LDF Calls for New Senate Judiciary Committee Hearings for Brett Talley and Thomas Farr". NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (Press release). November 16, 2017. Retrieved January 9, 2019.

Goldsmith, Thomas (November 17, 2017). "After the INDY's Report About Judicial Nominee Thomas Farr Misleading a Senate Committee, Senator Dianne Feinstein Wants Answers". Indy Week. Retrieved January 9, 2019.

Patrice, Joe (November 20, 2017). "Judicial Nominee May Have Lied To Senate About Role In Racist Voter Suppression Effort". Above the Law. Retrieved January 9, 2019.

Edmundson, Catie (November 29, 2018). "Senator Tim Scott Sinks Thomas Farr's Judicial Nomination Amid Racial Controversy". The New York Times. Retrieved November 30, 2018.

Robertson, Gary (July 13, 2017). "Farr gets another crack at North Carolina federal judgeship". Washington Times. Associated Press. Retrieved October 20, 2017.

"Ten Nominations Sent to the Senate Today". whitehouse.gov (Press release). July 13, 2017. Archived from the original on January 20, 2021 – via National Archives.

"Nominations". United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary. September 20, 2017. Retrieved October 12, 2020.

"Results of Executive Business Meeting" (PDF). Senate Judiciary Committee. October 19, 2017.

Congressional Record, 115th Congress, 2nd Session Issue: Vol. 164, No. 1 — Daily Edition. Congressional Record (Report). United States Senate. January 3, 2018. Retrieved December 4, 2018.

"President Donald J. Trump Announces Renomination of 21 Judicial Nominees". whitehouse.gov (Press release). January 5, 2018. Retrieved December 4, 2018 – via National Archives.

"Nominations Sent to the Senate Today". whitehouse.gov (Press release). January 8, 2018. Retrieved December 4, 2018 – via National Archives.

Whelan, Ed (November 27, 2018). "Schumer Smears Judicial Nominee Thomas Farr". National Review. Retrieved November 28, 2018.

Blytheheand, Anne; Murphy, Brian (December 22, 2017). "3 Trump judicial nominees out. Now another faces scrutiny about work for Jesse Helms". The News & Observer. Retrieved November 28, 2018.

"Results of Executive Business Meeting" (PDF). Senate Judiciary Committee. January 18, 2018.

"U.S. Senate: U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 115th Congress - 2nd Session". www.senate.gov.

External links

Appearances at the U.S. Supreme Court from the Oyez Project
Thomas Farr at Ballotpedia

Categories:

thomas farr

Contents

Early life and education

Career

North Carolina racial voter suppression

North Carolina voter ID law

Jesse Helms campaigns

Federal judicial nominations

See also

References

External links

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