An unqualified Trump judge strikes again, voids CDC mask mandate at airports, transportation hubs
This post was originally published on this site
Federal District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle has voided the Centers for Disease Control-issued mask mandate, which requires masks at airports and transportation hubs nationally. In her 59-page ruling, Mizelle argued that the CDC had exceeded its legal powers by issuing the mandate in January 2021.
“The Court concludes that the Mask Mandate exceeds the CDC’s statutory authority and violates the procedures required for agency rulemaking under the [Administrative Procedure Act],” Mizelle wrote. “Accordingly, the Court vacates the Mandate and remands it to the CDC.” It’s a sweeping ruling, one that will likely create chaos at airports and transportation hubs across the country while the Department of Justice, White House, and CDC prepare an appeal.
The scope of the ruling is a surprise, as is the source. Mizelle was one of the judges on Mitch McConnell’s conveyor belt pushed through in the lame duck session after the 2020 election, while the nation was in the depths of the COVID-19 crisis. At 33, Mizelle was the youngest of all of Donald Trump’s successful nominees to the judiciary. She was the 10th to be deemed “not qualified” by the American Bar Association.
The ABA’s standing committee on nominee evaluations sets the bar for judicial experience at at least 12 years in practice, and “substantial courtroom and trial experience as a lawyer or trial judge is important.” Mizelle had been admitted to the Florida bar in 2012, so had just eight years experience. “Since her admission to the bar,” the ABA committee wrote, “Ms. Mizelle has not tried a case, civil or criminal, as lead or co-counsel.”
“She presents as a delightful person and she has many friends who support her nomination,” the committee wrote. “Her integrity and demeanor are not in question. These attributes however simply do not compensate for the short time she has actually practiced law and her lack of meaningful trial experience.”
The ABA didn’t remark upon one of Mizelle’s more extremist fringe notions, expressed in a speech at the 2020 Florida Chapters Conference of the Federalist Society, that she believes “paper money” is unconstitutional. “This view, popular in fringe conservative circles, is explicitly contravened by the Supreme Court’s decisions in Knox v. Lee and Parker v. Davis, which have affirmed the constitutionality of paper money,” explains the Vetting Room, a blog analyzing judicial nominations.
None of that mattered to Trump or Senate Republicans. Because what she had going for her was a stint as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, the backing of the Federalist Society, and a husband, Chad Mizelle, who worked for Trump. He was a big booster of white supremacist adviser Stephen Miller, and that got him a job as acting general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), even though (there’s a theme here) he had far less legal and administrative experience than previous appointees to the position.
Mizelle also worked on the 2016 Trump campaign, where he “Monitored election-day activities to reduce voter fraud; reported incidents of illegal voting procedure to Philadelphia district attorney.” Uh, huh. We got ourselves another Clarence and Ginni Thomas in the making with these two.
We also have a rotten federal judiciary, larded up with Trump judges like this one. Yes, President Joe Biden has had tremendous success in getting actually qualified and diverse judges on the bench, but the damage that these ideologues can do can’t be exaggerated.
An appeal of Mizelle’s decision will go to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, one of three courts of appeal that Trump and McConnell flipped from a majority appointed by Democrats to a majority appointed by Republicans—including Trump, who appointed a whopping six of the judges there. Biden nominated Nancy Gbana Abudu, a civil rights litigator, to a vacancy on the 11th Circuit in January.
The chances of the Biden administration prevailing in the 11th look slim, and nonexistent in the Trump Supreme Court. The nation’s highest court already ruled that the CDC can’t impose national measures to curb the pandemic when it struck down the CDC’s eviction moratorium while the COVID-19 pandemic was still raging last summer. It did that from the shadow docket.
It’s not just the Supreme Court that needs expanding: The circuit and district courts need to have a new injection of qualified non-extremist judges to dilute the wack jobs who think we need to be running around with pocketfuls of gold coins. But the Supreme Court would be a very good place to start.
RELATED STORIES: