Members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee voted 18-2 Thursday to send Birmingham attorney Kevin Newsom's nomination to an open seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit to the full Senate for confirmation.
The vote on Newsom included support of ranking member Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. It was flanked by split votes sending to the Senate floor two far more controversial candidates Kentuckian John K. Bush for a seat on the federal Sixth Circuit and Damien Schiff for the U.S. Court of Federal Claims but not before committee Democrats roundly condemned their nominations.
Senators Chris Coons, D-Delaware, and Al Franken, D-Minn., cast the only votes opposing Newsom.
Feinstein announced she intended to vote for Newsom, Alabama's former solicitor general and a partner at Bradley Arant Boult Cummings. But she used his nomination to defend the blue slip, a courtesy allowing senators to approve federal nominees from their home states before the Senate confirms them.
Feinstein said Newsom's nomination came only after Alabama's Republican senators refused to return blue slips on former President Barack Obama's nominee, U.S. District Judge Abdul Kallon.
"Judge Kallon did not receive a hearing in this committee last year because Senators [Richard] Shelby and [Jeff] Sessions did not support his elevation to the circuit court," she said. But, she continued, the White House and others "have suggested that the failure to quickly return blue slips is tantamount to wholesale obstruction of the president's nominees."
"There has been no obstruction," Feinstein said. "Judge Kallon and three other circuit nominees waited nine,10,11 months for blue slips that never came. And there wasn't a lot of concern by the Wall Street Journal editorial board or the Judicial Crisis Network or the Koch brothers about those nominees."