White House Reaches Out to Asian-American Leaders About Supreme Court Seat
NationalLawJournal: A White House official held a conference call Thursday evening with Asian-American and Pacific Islander leaders to discuss the U.S. Supreme Court. Several Asian-American judges have been discussed as leading candidates for the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat.
Judges considered possible nominees include Sri Srinivasan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Jacqueline Nguyen of the Ninth Circuit and Judge Denny Chin of the Second Circuit.
Invitations to join the call—which was off the record, according to a copy of the invitation email obtained by The National Law Journal—were disseminated by email and on social media. The Asian American Bar Association of New York posted a notice about it on its Facebook page.
Tina Tchen, an assistant to President Barack Obama and chief of staff to First Lady Michelle Obama, led the Thursday call, according to the email invitation.
The email invitation about the call from the White House did not include details about what would be discussed. A lawyer who was on the call said that Tchen did not identify possible nominees. The call was focused generally on motivating and organizing the Asian American community to support the president’s nominee.
Tina Matsuoka, executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association in Washington, said the call signaled the White House’s acknowledgement of excitement in the Asian-American community that the next Supreme Court justice could become the first Asian-American to sit on the high court.
“This meeting is consistent with this administration’s engagement with various constituent groups,” Matsuoka said. “I think it’s consistent with their efforts to focus on diversity inclusion on the federal bench.”
At a press briefing earlier this week, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said that officials were “going to engage with outside groups as the President makes a decision about who to put forward for a nomination to the Supreme Court” and would continue to engage those groups after a nominee was announced “in terms of making the case that the Senate should fulfill its constitutional obligations.”
“The truth is the engagement on the part of the White House with outside organizations that are interested in being involved in the political process is something that happens every day on a wide variety of issues,” Earnest said. “Obviously the Supreme Court is different and unique because it’s not something that comes up every year, it only comes up every once in a blue moon. And sometimes, like this year, it can come up unpredictably, without any advance warning.”
The White House has not said when President Obama will announce a nominee for Scalia’s seat. Obama was traveling in Milwaukee on Thursday afternoon. A White House spokesman, Eric Schultz, told reporters on Thursday that “this is something the president is spending a lot of time on … reviewing potential candidates, meeting with his team, and really looking for the best person for the job.”
The New York Times reported Wednesday that Jane Kelly, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, was being considered. The NLJ reported last week that the White House was also reviewing Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Matsuoka said she and other members of the Asian-American community were looking for assurance from the White House that Asian-American candidates are “seriously considered for the vacancy.”
“We’ve been really excited that there’s a number of Asian-Americans who have been talked about in the mainstream press, and it’s really galvanized the community,” Matsuoka said.
The White House has met with constituent and advocacy groups in the leadup to Supreme Court nominations in the past. As Obama considered candidates for the seat that would eventually go to Justice Sonia Sotomayor in 2010, the White House met with liberal advocacy groups, including Hispanics for a Fair Judiciary Coalition, CNN reported at the time.
