Only one Republican voted against making Howard Nielson a lifetime federal judge.
The Senate voted Wednesday to confirm Howard Nielson to be a lifetime federal judge, despite opposition from Democrats over his long record of fighting marriage equality and for writing a legal memo that justified torturing civilians.
Nielson, a partner at the Washington, D.C.-based law firm Cooper & Kirk and a former deputy assistant attorney general under President George W. Bush, sparked controversy in 2010 during his defense of Proposition 8, California’s ban on same-sex marriage. At the time, the state’s governor and attorney general refused to defend Prop 8, so the official sponsors of the ballot initiative hired Nielson’s firm to do it.
When a U.S. district court ruled that Prop 8 violated the Constitution, Nielson said the judge should have recused himself because he was gay and therefore unable to be fair. He filed a motion saying the judge “had a duty to disclose not only the facts concerning his [same-sex] relationship, but also his marriage intentions.” His motion was denied.
On a separate matter, when he worked for the Bush administration, Nielson wrote a 2005 memo that has been criticized as justifying torture. He has also defended a former Justice Department colleague who signed off on three controversial and now-rescinded memos authorizing the CIA’s use of torture.
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