Neomi Rao

On November 14, 2018, President Trump nominated Neomi J. Rao to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals seat previously held by Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh. The nomination immediately sparked intense controversy, for reasons related both to Rao’s own record and the unique circumstances surrounding her nomination and this moment in history.

Since her confirmation in July 2017 as Administrator of theOffice of Management and Budget’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), Rao has overseen and championed President Trump’s agenda of stripping away public protections and safety standards.

Before joining the Trump Administration, Rao worked as a law professor at George Mason Law School. There, she took a leading role in advocating to change the name of the law school in honor of Justice Antonin Scalia, following a multi-million dollar donation from the Charles Koch Foundation. The Kochs donated $10 million to support the school’s renaming, fueling a student-led lawsuit over concerns about the law school’s academic independence. The suit sought disclosure of any agreements the school may have made with the Koch brothers in exchange for the funds.

Rao was also the director and founder of the center for the Study of the AdministrativeState, founded in 2015 at what is now Antonin Scalia Law School. The KochFoundation’s 2016 grant agreement binds the law school to provide funding to the center for at least ten years, prioritizing its influence. Consistent with the agenda of its wealthy and powerful benefactors, the Center fights against protections for the environment, consumers, and workers.

While working at the law school, Rao, along with the law school dean, also met withLeonard Leo, the influential executive at the Federalist Society who has played a key role in Trump’s judicial appointments. Rao and Leo’s personal relationship is evinced by emails uncovered by UnKoch My Campus through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Rao’s affinity for Leo’s Federalist Society began long before it became the main outside group to which Trump has delegated important aspects of the judicial nomination process. She joined at age 23 and has been a member since then. Rao is a frequent speaker at Federalist Society events, listing at least 32 Federalist Society speeches in her Senate Judiciary Questionnaire. Rao also gave a 2016 speech, “Executive Agency Overreach and Civil Justice,” at theLawyers for Civil Justice National Conference. This organization advocates to limit Americans’ access to the courts. In 2018, she received the Heritage FoundationDistinguished Alumni Award.

Rao’s public appearances and early writings strongly suggest she would be an ideological, partisan jurist if confirmed to the D.C. Circuit. She has consistently opposed judges appointed by Democratic presidents. Rao testified in opposition to Supreme Court nomineeSonia Sotomayor, criticizing Sotomayor’s “personal, consequentialist approach to judging.” Rao also wrote skeptically about Elena Kagan’s nomination to the SupremeCourt, arguing that “Ms. Kagan and those preparing her face a simple, political problem: ‘progressive’ views of judging are difficult to defend.”

Rao’s antipathy to Democrats emerged early; she once criticized a liberal group on Yale’s campus as“representative of the modern elitist class of Democrat bent on paternalistic social engineering” [emphasis added]. In an article arguing against the movement for women’s equality, she wrote, “Women can be reduced neither to the Hillary Clinton bitch-model nor to the primeval earth mother wielding mystical powers over men” [emphasis added].

Prior to her career as a law professor, Rao served from 2005 to 2006 in the George W.Bush Administration as Special Assistant to the President and Associate Counsel in the White House Counsel’s Office. From 2002 to 2005, Rao was in private practice at Clifford Chance LLP in London. She worked as Counsel forNominations and Constitutional Law for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee from2001 to 2002. Rao also interned for the Institute forJustice, which was initiated with seed money from the Koch brothers. The Institute for Justice’s purported mission is to “litigate[] to limit the size and scope of government power.” After college, Rao wrote for the Weekly Standard, a conservative publication.

Rao also clerked for Supreme CourtJustice Clarence Thomas and for Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, III. Rao received her J.D. from the University of Chicago LawSchool in 1999 and a B.A. from Yale University.