Although Donald Trump’s administration has been beset by hasty resignations in recent days, one group of Trump allies will likely remain in office: the hundreds of judges he appointed during his four years in the presidency.
At last count, Trump has nominated three Supreme Court justices and 230 lower court judges, accounting to a new report from Lambda Legal. Due to vacancies exacerbated by Republican obstructionism during Obama’s tenure, there were ample openings to fill in the judiciary. Now, as he leaves office, about 30% of federal appeals judges were appointed by Trump.
Many of those judges are young and could remain in office for decades, provided they do not resign amid the continuing fallout over Wednesday’s riots at the U.S. Capitol building.
Lambda Legal is sounding the alarm over the damage likely to be done by those appointees. A significant number of them have expressed hostility to LGBTQ+ Americans and were rated as unqualified by leading judicial organizations.
Those judges pose a “danger to the rule of law, the danger to the integrity and credibility of the judiciary,” said Sharon McGowan, legal director for Lambda Legal, in a statement. “I think in many ways, Trump’s impact on the judiciary will be his most significant and lasting legacy because it will have a life far beyond the four years of the Trump administration.”
Those judges are also disproportionately likely to be white, Lambda Legal found. Of the 87 federal judges Trump named, only one is Black and one is Hispanic.
The judges advanced by Trump and Congressional Republicans have a history of ruling against equal rights. Judge James Ho, for example, wrote a ruling that denied health care to a transgender woman in Texas. Ho misgendered the woman repeatedly in his ruling,l and suggested that medical care for trans people is unnecessary.
Judge David Stras in another alarming Trump ally. Stras sided with business owners who want to turn away customers who might be gay. And then there’s Judge Kyle Duncan, who ruled that courts are under no obligation to honor transgender litigants’ pronouns. According to Duncan, showing respect to transgender people in court would “raise delicate questions about judicial impartiality” — as if showing disrespect does not raise exactly the same questions.
Trump judges have also ruled against laws designed to protect youth from abusive conversion therapy, a practice that the American Medical Association and many other professional groups have said is extremely harmful.
Judge Britt Grant ruled that practitioners should have a First Amendment right to impose the harmful practice on children and was joined by Trump ally Judge Barbara Lagoa.
“We can and should be able to expect fair and impartial justice from judges,” McGowan told USA Today. “There should be a baseline below which we would never fall.”
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