The United States Senate just gave Benjamin Flowers a lifetime gig on the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, and Democrats are absolutely beside themselves about it. The vote was 49 to 46, almost entirely split along party lines, because of course it was. As Conservative Brief reported, the former Ohio solicitor general is now heading to the federal bench whether the left likes it or not.
Now here is where it gets entertaining. During his May 20 confirmation hearing, Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut asked Flowers to name the winner of the 2020 presidential election. Flowers started saying that Joe Biden was legally certified, but Blumenthal cut him off before he could finish the sentence. Apparently giving a factually accurate answer was not good enough. Blumenthal then accused Flowers of having rehearsed responses with the White House, calling it disqualifying. This is the same Richard Blumenthal who famously lied about serving in Vietnam, so maybe sit this particular round of credibility policing out, Senator.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley fired back by pointing out the obvious double standard. He reminded everyone that Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said during her own confirmation that weighing in publicly on political debates would be inappropriate. And let us not forget that Jackson also famously declined to provide a definition of the word woman on multiple occasions. So apparently dodging questions is only problematic when Republicans do it.
Senator Mike Lee backed that up by citing the Code of Conduct for United States Judges, noting that the same ethical guidelines apply to nominees and sitting judges alike.
Flowers has a pretty stacked resume, honestly. He graduated from Ohio State University and the University of Chicago Law School. He clerked for Ninth Circuit Judge Sandra Ikuta and then for the legendary Justice Antonin Scalia. He spent time at Jones Day and served as Ohio's 10th solicitor general, where he argued three cases before the Supreme Court. One of those was the successful challenge to OSHA's COVID vaccine mandate.
Senator Amy Klobuchar also got her turn at the microphone, pressing Flowers about his defense of Ohio's six week abortion law, which at the time lacked exceptions for rape or incest. She brought up the widely reported case of a 10 year old rape victim who had to travel to Indiana for an abortion after exceeding Ohio's limit by three days. Flowers acknowledged that anyone who is raped, particularly a child, suffers irreparable harm, but noted that his job as the state's attorney was to defend existing law, not rewrite it.
University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias described Flowers as resembling most of Trump's second term appellate picks, calling them battle hardened. He also noted similarities to first term nominees, describing them as ideologically conservative Federalist Society members who practiced at big national firms.
Flowers replaces Judge Jeffrey Sutton on the court, which covers cases from Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, and Tennessee. He is a partner at Ashbrook Byrne Kresge Flowers LLC and hails from Upper Arlington, Ohio. So congratulations to the newest lifetime federal judge, and condolences to Democrats who turned another confirmation hearing into performance art.
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