Today, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) sent a letter to Senators Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer opposing the nomination of Sarah Pitlyk to the federal district court for the Eastern District of Missouri.
Ms. Pitlyk is the eighth judicial nominee advanced by President Trump who has been rated unqualified by the American Bar Association (ABA)’s Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary. In its assessment of Ms. Pitlyk, the ABA found that she has never tried a case as lead or co-counsel, examined a witness, or picked a jury, among other key responsibilities in which a federal judge should be well-experienced when joining the bench.
Ms. Pitlyk has also made a career trafficking in alarming and racist stereotypes about African American women and women of color. Just last year, she co-authored an amicus brief in Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky in which she argued in favor of sex and race-selective abortion bans, which prohibit abortion providers from performing abortions if the reason for the abortion is the race or sex of the fetus. She based this argument on unfounded claims that “[b]abies of minority mothers are aborted at a far higher rate than their white counterparts” — claims that are unfounded and deeply offensive.
Read LDF’s full letter here.
