The Senate on Thursday rejected President Joe Biden’s nominee to the Manhattan federal trial court. It was the first time a Biden judicial nominee has been rejected in the Democratic-majority Senate.
The Senate Judiciary Committee, on an 11-10 vote, rejected federal magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn’s nomination to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Every Republican voted against her, along with one Democrat, Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia.
If approved, Netburn would have served for life.
Netburn was rejected in part because of her decision to allow a male rapist to transfer to a women’s prison because he said he was a woman.
Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee excoriated Netburn for placing women in danger that way.
“The prisoner dubbed July Justine Shelby—his real name is William McLean—was a serial rapist,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said of the 6-foot-2-inch man. “There’s no other way to say it: His past criminal offenses included child molestation of a 9-year-old boy, rape of a 17-year-old girl, and criminal deviant conduct.”
The prisoner was initially put in a men’s lockup, but at 51 years old, he decided he was a woman and argued that failure to put him in prison with women was a violation of his Eighth Amendment right to not be subjected to “cruel and inhuman punishments.”
Cruz said Netburn put “political ideology over justice and reality,” and allowed McLean to be transferred despite a “lifelong pattern of rape, sexual assault, and obvious sexually predatory instincts.”
That was after the U.S. Bureau of Prisons rejected McLean’s requests to be moved out of a male facility.
Cruz recounted several stories of men identifying as women harming and raping women in prison. The Texas lawmaker said he asked Netburn if she regretted the transfer, and she responded, “No, I faithfully applied the law to the facts.”
Cruz said, “That is not the law, and these are not the facts.”
All but Ossoff among the Democrats on the committee supported Netburn.
“It is fair to ask whether the judge made a reasonable decision in this case at the time she made the decision,” Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said according to Courthouse News. “The decision by the district court to support her decision is an indication that it was fair and reasonable.”
Ossoff, however, said he couldn’t support Netburn.
“I’m passionate about civil rights and human rights in carceral facilities,” Ossoff said in an interview with Courthouse News. “These are tough issues, but that was my judgment in the markup [Thursday].”
Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., said that Netburn was rightly rejected, but noted that she was still approved by most of the committee’s Democrats, demonstrating the radical nature of that party.
“While the committee voted this nominee down, all but one Democrat voted to move forward. I hope the American people are watching what’s going on when it comes to the Democratic agenda,” Graham said. “Female prisoners being housed with biological males is an affront to safety and common sense, and it needs to stop.”
