Dear Chair Grassley, Ranking Member Durbin, and Committee Members:

We, the undersigned organizations committed to ensuring fair courts, write to express our concerns regarding President Trump’s selection of judicial nominees. Many of these nominees have a record of undermining reproductive freedoms and subverting voting rights in ways that threaten our democracy. 

Reproductive rights and voting rights are often targeted in tandem, as demonstrated by the Supreme Court’s role in undermining the right to an abortion and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Overturning Roe v. Wade stripped away the vital constitutional protections for abortion. Before the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision in 2022, the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013 by striking its enforcement mechanism, which was critical to safeguard against discriminatory voting practices that targeted Black and brown communities. While the other primary enforcement section of the Voting Rights Act remains intact, the Supreme Court is set to hear a challenge against it next month. Out of the six Justices that voted to overturn Roe and undermine abortion rights, half were Trump-appointed Supreme Court Justices. Just as Trump Justices ripped away the constitutional right to abortion after nearly 50 years of precedent, we are concerned they will do the same for the anti-discrimination voting protections created by the Voting Rights Act. Moreover, one tried and true way to further restrict abortion rights is to stop entire communities from accessing the ballot box and keeping lawmakers who make decisions on reproductive rights accountable. The legal records of many of President Trump’s judicial appointments to both district and appellate courts reflects this dangerous commitment to dismantling reproductive rights and voting rights.

Read the full letter and see the list of signatories in the official letter here.