New Pressure to End Old Senate Practice After Mississippi Judicial Pick Is Blocked

WASHINGTON — Democrats hoped they were on the verge of a judicial breakthrough last month when President Biden nominated a Baton Rouge lawyer for a U.S. District Court vacancy and the two Republican senators from Louisiana offered no objections.

Getting Republican senators to sign off on Biden nominees in their home states has been a struggle, slowing the Democratic drive to fill as many judicial slots as possible. Democrats saw negotiations that led to the selection of the nominee from Baton Rouge, Darrel Papillion, as a sign that they could fill seats in red states without changing longstanding rules and prompting a potential procedural war.

Then last week, Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, Republican of Mississippi, served notice to the Judiciary Committee that she would not allow the nomination of Scott Colom, a candidate for a court vacancy in the state, to move forward, citing his past political support from the left, among other reasons. Her stance endangered the confirmation of Mr. Colom, a popular Black Democratic state prosecutor who had the backing of Roger Wicker, the other Republican senator from the state, as well as leading Mississippi Republicans including two former governors, Haley Barbour and Phil Bryant.

“I simply cannot support his nomination to serve on the federal bench in Mississippi for a lifetime,” she said in a statement.

Her objections surprised and frustrated Democrats who said she had not raised them before despite her knowledge about a nomination initially made last October.

“Senator Hyde-Smith is raising spurious concerns about Mr. Colom now, for the first time since we began the vetting process — with her full knowledge and awareness — in January 2022,” said Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman.

The Republican senator’s position served as the last straw for liberal judicial advocacy groups that have been clamoring for Senate Democrats to quit honoring the more than century-old “blue slip” process for district court vacancies. The practice, which has been applied unevenly over the decades, requires that both home-state senators sign off to allow a nomination to move forward, effectively giving each the power to torpedo any candidate.

Proponents of ending it argue that Republicans are abusing the blue slip to prevent Mr. Biden from filling district court vacancies, dozens of which currently exist in states represented by either one or two Republican senators.

“It’s time for the Senate Judiciary Committee to put a foot down,” said Svante Myrick, the president of People for the American Way. He urged Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, to make it clear that “the threat to withhold a blue slip after efforts to work with the home-state senators will no longer derail the entire process of judicial nominations.”

Republicans abandoned the blue-slip process for appeals court judges after gaining control of the Senate in 2015, allowing them to rapidly confirm scores of Donald J. Trump’s judicial nominees over Democratic objections. But the practice was retained for district court judges, and Mr. Durbin has been reluctant to jettison it, fearing Republicans would retaliate by bringing the confirmation process to a standstill.

“You always have to ask, ‘What would they do in response?’” Mr. Durbin said in an interview. “There are an infinite array of possibilities to slow down the United States Senate. Anyone can stop the train for any reason.”

He pointed to objections by Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama, to a new Pentagon abortion policy that have prompted him to block the usual routine approval of scores of military promotions.

But since taking control of the Judiciary Committee in 2021, Mr. Durbin has also said he would not respect blue-slip objections that he found were not based on legitimate grounds, were not made in good faith or were the result of racial or gender discrimination. Progressives say the Colom nomination could meet that test. A spokeswoman for Mr. Durbin said that he was “extremely disappointed” in Ms. Hyde-Smith’s position and that he would “be assessing and will respond more fully.”

Activists urged him to act, accusing Ms. Hyde-Smith of what Scott Kang, the chief counsel for the liberal advocacy group Demand Justice, called the “worst kind of Republican obstructionism.”

“Chair Durbin must reform the blue-slip policy and not allow a senator who would not even certify the 2020 presidential election results to deny highly qualified nominees a fair hearing,” Mr. Kang said.

Mr. Colom, a native of Columbus, Miss., and a former local judge before becoming district attorney, was nominated by Mr. Biden in October at the recommendation of Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi. His nomination was not considered before the previous Congress ended in early January, forcing Mr. Biden to renominate him. He has won approval from Mr. Wicker as well as Representative Trent Kelly, a Republican from the state, and Mr. Bryant, who as governor appointed Ms. Hyde-Smith to the Senate in 2018 after Senator Thad Cochran resigned.

“I have known two generations of the Colom family for over 20 years and believe Scott Colom possesses the discernment to be a fair and exemplary judge,” Mr. Bryant said in a statement.

Other Republicans said the rejection of Mr. Colom, who is also supported by local sheriffs, could lead to a nominee who does not have such broad, bipartisan support.

“He is a good man and is better than we can expect from the Biden administration,” said Mr. Barbour, who preceded Mr. Bryant in the governor’s office.

In her statement, Ms. Hyde-Smith noted that she had met with Mr. Colom and acknowledged that he “is smart and well liked in his district.” But she said she had concerns about his opposition to legislation to protect female athletes as well as “significant support” his campaign received from the liberal billionaire George Soros.

Mr. Soros, a financier and Democratic donor, is often cited as a villain by Republicans who use his name as a kind of political epithet against the Democrats he has backed. Mr. Trump has linked the New York prosecutor who indicted him, Alvin L. Bragg, to Mr. Soros because Mr. Bragg’s campaign received money from a political action committee funded by the billionaire. Ms. Hyde-Smith announced her opposition to Mr. Colom on the day Mr. Trump appeared in court on his indictment.

Mr. Colom and his supporters have sought to rebut her objections. In a letter to Ms. Hyde-Smith obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Colom noted that he had never met nor spoken with Mr. Soros and that the money contributed in 2015 came from a political action committee.

“I never requested these funds from Mr. Soros,” wrote Mr. Colom, who was re-elected without opposition in 2019. “I did not know the money would be contributed — and did not even learn about the contributions until I read about them in my hometown paper.”

As for her criticism on female athletes, Mr. Colom wrote that he was uncertain of the reference and said that he had signed a statement with other law enforcement officials that declared he did not support using scarce criminal justice resources to prosecute those who “offer medically necessary, safe gender-affirming care to trans youth.”

“I hope you will reconsider your views about my nomination,” Mr. Colom wrote to Ms. Hyde-Smith.

Her position is likely to create a backlash from Judiciary Committee Democrats who have welcomed Republican support for the nominee from Louisiana and for judicial picks in other states such as Idaho, but are watching carefully the slow pace of blue slips from elsewhere.

“In the long run,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, “if Republicans overplay their hand, blue slips are going to be history.”