By Andrew Goudsward
(Reuters) - A voting rights lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union on Wednesday overcame fierce Republican opposition to secure U.S. Senate confirmation as a judge on the Manhattan federal district court.
Dale Ho, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, was confirmed on a nearly party-line 50-49 vote. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia was the lone Democrat who voted against the nomination, citing "prior inflammatory statements" by Ho.
Ho faced intense resistance from Republicans over his past social media posts critical of the party's senators and conservative policies, which they said cast doubt on his fitness to serve as a federal judge.
Ho apologized during a 2021 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing for using “overheated rhetoric” on social media, including criticizing Sen. Mike Lee of Utah for tweets arguing that safeguarding personal liberty was a more important objective than ensuring democracy.
Ho broadly defended his past advocacy and vowed to serve "as a fair, neutral, impartial arbiter of the law.” Progressives touted Ho as a civil rights champion.
While at the ACLU, Ho challenged Republican-backed voting restrictions and argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in a case that blocked the Trump administration from including a citizenship question on the 2020 U.S. Census.
Ho is Biden’s fifth confirmed judicial nominee for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and will be the second active Asian American judge on the court.
Biden has sought to increase racial and ethnic diversity on the U.S. judiciary and appoint judges from varied professional backgrounds such as public defenders and civil rights lawyers.
"Under previous administrations, lawyers who spent their careers at civil rights organizations were too often passed over when it came time to pick judges," Brian Fallon, executive director of the progressive group Demand Justice said Wednesday. "Not so anymore."