Judge Boyce F. Martin, Jr.:
President Carter appointed Judge Martin to the Sixth Circuit in 1979. He served as Chief Judge of the Sixth Circuit for several years, and is now Chief Judge Emeritus. As we noted yesterday, he stands out as one of the most liberal members of the federal judiciary. He wrote Grutter v. Bollinger, where the Sixth Circuit held that the University of Michigan Law School’s system of relying on race as a factor in its admissions policy was a narrowly tailored means of achieving a compelling interest. The Supreme Court of the United States later upheld this decision.
Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton:
President George W. Bush appointed Judge Sutton to the Sixth Circuit in 2001 and he was confirmed by the Senate in 2003. Prior to joining the court, Judge Sutton clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia and served as Ohio’s state solicitor general from 1995 to 1998, where he was a vocal proponent of states’ rights. A Washington Post article noted that Sutton “attracted conservative support before his nomination by consistently pressing for states’ rights and challenging enforcement at the federal level of civil rights and disabilities laws.” The same article described Sutton as the “intellectual engine behind some of the majority’s more conservative opinions.” Sutton’s state’s rights credibility came under fire, however, after he ruled in the Ohio Republican Party’s favor in its attempt to have 200,000 registered democrats removed from the rolls.
Judge James L. Graham:
President Reagan appointed Judge Graham to the federal bench in 1986. Judge Graham is now the Chief Judge of the Southern District of Ohio. Though his record is does not contain much that would illuminate his views on structural constitutional law, he did gain some attention for his 2008 issuance of a temporary restraining order “against the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services and the Ohio Department of Health preventing them from implementing proposed rules that would have eliminated Medicaid reimbursement for medically necessary Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) services to children with autism.”
