If Obama were to focus on nominating an African American woman, he would be working from a short list, people familiar with the selection process said. Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch, for example, was initially viewed as a contender, and NAACP President Cornell William Brooks said Tuesday that his organization has told the White House that many of its members want her considered.
But The Washington Post reported Monday that Lynch was no longer a candidate, which she confirmed Tuesday in a statement issued by her spokeswoman. “As the conversation around the Supreme Court vacancy progressed, the Attorney General determined that the limitations inherent in the nomination process would curtail her effectiveness in her current role. Given the urgent issues before the Department of Justice, she asked not to be considered for the position,’’ said the spokeswoman, Melanie Newman, in a statement.
That leaves Brown Jackson as the only African American woman known to be on the short list. She has degrees from Harvard University and Harvard Law School and had a top position at the U.S. Sentencing Commission but has only been a judge since 2013.
And it is rare for someone to go from a U.S. District Court directly to the Supreme Court, bypassing the appellate courts on which many justices have served. The last justice to make the leap was Edward T. Sanford, who was appointed in 1923 after serving 15 years as a federal judge in Tennessee.
Civil rights leaders said Tuesday that they regard Brown Jackson as a highly credible candidate. “Her name leaps out of the current list. It’s a question of intellect and broad life experience,’’ said Steve Phillips, founder of the social justice group PowerPAC+ and author of the book “Brown is the New White.’’
Phillips — whose organization along with the progressive group Democracy for America launched an online petition calling for a woman of color to be nominated — pointed out that some famous justices never served on the lower courts, such as Earl Warren, who was chief justice in the 1950s and 1960s after serving as governor of California.
Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II (D-Mo.), a former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said Tuesday that caucus members are increasingly discussing Danielle Holley-Walker, who has been dean of Howard University Law School since 2014. Other civil rights leaders said her name has been forwarded to the White House, but it’s unclear whether she is under serious consideration.
Holley-Walker, 41, would be unusually young for a Supreme Court nominee but holds a distinguished résumé: Harvard Law, a clerkship with a federal appeals judge, a stint as a corporate litigator and a scholarly record focusing on education and civil rights. “There are a lot of emails and texts flying across the country right now concerning her,” Cleaver said. “She would be fabulous.”
Another widely discussed possible candidate, California Attorney General Kamala Harris (D), has told associates she is not interested in the position, said sources familiar with the process.
But activists and civil rights leaders are not giving up, urging Obama to cast a wider net in the search. “With the issues that are going to come before the court in the next decade, you need to make sure all perspectives are there,” said Benjamin L. Crump, a prominent civil rights lawyer who is president of the National Bar Association, the nation’s largest group of lawyers of color. He cited issues the high court could take up in coming years, such as school funding, police brutality and equal pay for women and minorities.
“We think an African American woman would be uniquely qualified to give a perspective that the court doesn’t have right now,’’ said Crump, who represented the family of Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old black teen shot and killed in a widely publicized 2012 incident.
And Brooks, the NAACP president, cited the nation’s growing ethnic diversity.“It’s 2016,” he said. “It’s high time for the consideration of African American women on the court. . . . It’s likely to be the president’s last chance.”
