The Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday morning approved the nomination of Neomi Rao to replace Justice Brett Kavanaugh on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit after the concerns of a key GOP senator cast uncertainty on her nomination.
But in the end, the panel voted 12-10 along party lines to advance Rao’s nomination to the Senate floor for a full vote.
President Trump announced Rao as his pick to the D.C. Circuit, considered the second most powerful court in the country, in November. But her nomination was called into question this week after Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, raised red flags about her views on abortion.
“I just want to make sure we put judges on the bench who respect life, who are going to protect life to the maximum extent they can under this current Supreme Court doctrine,” Hawley told radio host Marc Cox on Monday.
The Missouri senator sent Rao a letter Tuesday outlining his concerns about her judicial philosophy and approach to constitutional law, and the two met for a second time Wednesday ahead of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s vote.
Hawley ended up supporting Rao’s nomination and said in a statement that during their meeting, Rao “said she would interpret the Constitution according to its text, structure and history, not according to changing social and political understandings.
“She said the text of the Constitution is fixed and the meaning must follow that fixed text,” Hawley said.
The senator’s questions about Rao’s record led a number of conservative groups to rush to her defense and boost their own efforts in support of her nomination.
In addition to the scrutiny from Hawley, Rao, 45, faced questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee during her confirmation hearing about her college-aged writings about date rape and sexual assault. In one piece, she wrote: “It has always seemed self-evident to me that even if I drank a lot, I would still be responsible for my actions. A man who rapes a drunk girl should be prosecuted. At the same time, a good way to avoid a potential date rape is to stay reasonably sober.”
Rao expressed regret for her op-eds and, in a subsequent letter to the committee, declared sexual assault to be “abhorrent.”
Rao currently leads the Office of the Information and Regulatory Affairs and has been a key figure in implementing Trump’s regulatory agenda. She also served as a professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School.
