The NYTimes obtained memos being circulated among conservative organizations preparing to oppose President Obama's first Supreme Court nominee. Talking points attacking (or, in one case, supporting) each of the rumored short-list candidates hit on a range of political hot buttons, religious liberty among them.
The memorandums dissect possible nominees’ records, noting statements they find objectionable on issues like abortion, same-sex marriage, the separation of church and state and the propriety of citing foreign law in interpreting the Constitution.
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Those summaries suggest that conservatives find some potential picks to be less objectionable than others.
The memorandum on [Federal District Judge Martha] Vasquez, for example, approvingly notes cases in which she voted to… allow a city to display a Ten Commandments monument…
By contrast, the memorandum on [Judge Diane] Wood, who sits on the federal appeals court in Chicago, says with alarm that she has…sided with a university that revoked a religious student group’s official status because it barred gay students and with opponents of a state legislature’s practice of starting sessions with prayers.
The references to Wood's opinions are: 1) the case of Christian Legal Society v. Southern Illinois University, in which she dissented (pdf) from the majority's decision awarding a preliminary injunction against the school. There, among other rationales, she argued that the denial of offical support through recognition was not a denial of the rights to association and expression; and 2) the Indiana House prayer case, in which she dissented from the majority's view that, after Hein, plaintiffs lack the standing to challenge the practice of opening legislative sessions with denominational prayer.
