Anti-Voting Rights Murphy Confirmed on Selma Anniversary

WASHINGTON, D.C., March 7, 2019 – Following today’s Senate vote to confirm Eric Murphy to a seat on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, AFJ President Nan Aron released the following statement:

“It is very unfortunate that on this anniversary of a seminal event in the civil rights movement, Selma’s Bloody Sunday, the Senate has voted to confirm an individual who has led efforts to curtail voting rights in his home state of Ohio. Eric Murphy is the lawyer who defended Ohio’s wholesale purge of voters from its rolls, an action that will disproportionately disenfranchise people of color, veterans, low-income people and people with disabilities. He’s the lawyer who argued against marriage equality in Obergefell v. Hodges. This is not the kind of record Americans want federal judges to have in 2019, and Murphy is being confirmed over the objections of a home-state senator, Senator Brown, in yet another egregious abuse of the confirmation process.”