Judicial Nominees & Supreme Court

The ACLJ Office of Governmental Affairs continues to work on key issues on Capitol Hill - including judicial nominees and protecting children from indecent programming.

Just prior to Congress taking its Memorial Day recess, the ACLJ saw a victory in the Senate with the confirmation of Steven Agee to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.  The floor vote was 96-0.  While this is movement in the right direction, there are still four nominees for the 4th Circuit who continue to wait for confirmation hearings:  Robert Conrad, Steve Matthews, Rod Rosenstein and Glen Conrad. Some of these nominees, like Robert Conrad, have been waiting over 300 days since their nominations for a hearing. When Congress returns from its recess, the ACLJ will continue to push to get these well-qualified nominees confirmed.

In another victory for the ACLJ, the Supreme Court ruled to uphold the federal Protect Act of 2003, which provides greater protection from child pornographers.  We worked with, and represented, 18 Members of Congress (including five cosponsors of the original legislation) in a friend-of-the-court brief filed at the Supreme Court.  The Court agreed with our position and ruled in our favor by a vote of 7-2.

In its amicus brief, the ACLJ urged the high court to overturn a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit that declared a provision of the Protect Act unconstitutional.   The ACLJ contended that Congress acted properly when it included this provision in the measure:  Any person who knowingly advertises, promotes, presents, distributes or solicits a visual depiction of a child engaged in sex commits a crime, whether or not the material exists.

In the majority opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia concluded that the statute raises no constitutional problems whatever and correctly rejected arguments that the Protect Act violates the First Amendment. Justice Scalia wrote:  In sum, we hold that offers to provide or requests to obtain child pornography are categorically excluded from the First Amendment.

Our government affairs team is also working on another brief headed for the Supreme Court - this time in the case FCC v. FOX.  In this case, our brief seeks to protect children from indecent programming. The FCC has implemented a sound policy for reducing indecent programming during the hours when children are likely to be watching.  However, FOX has challenged the regulation by claiming that there should be no mechanism for issuing penalties for a single expletive.  Our brief will focus on the sound rationale for the FCC regulation, and we are working with the authors of related legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives to make our case.  We will file our brief on behalf of these members of Congress in early June.
 
As always, you can stay up-to-date with our work in the courts and on Capitol Hill.  Check out our website regularly and listen to our daily radio program, Jay Sekulow Live!