The Trump-appointed judge who ruled last week that the FDA’s approval of an abortion pill was unconstitutional has reportedly hid a transphobic and anti-abortion article from the Senate that he helped produce, That reports the Washington Post.
District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s ruling against mifepristone – the abortion pill that the FDA approved in 2000 and accounts for about 60% of all abortions in the country – leaned heavily on anti-choice rhetoric and baseless claims. Kacsmaryk, 46, was appointed by the Senate in 2019 as a federal judge for life by a to vote by 52-46 after being nominated by former President Donald Trump, but critics have spoken out concerns about his anti-LGBTQ and anti-reproductive rights stances since before his appointment.
The 13 pages article who had Kacsmaryk’s byline while drafting was featured in the 21st volume of the “Texas Review of Law & Politics” in 2017 and is titled “The Jurisprudence Of The Body: Conscience Rights In The Use Of The Sword, Scalpel, And Syringe.”
Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA) called for Kacsmaryk’s resignation in multiple tweets this weekend.
“Why did Judge Kacsmaryk mislead the American people during his confirmation hearing on his views on abortion? Because he knew he wouldn’t be confirmed if people found out he was a religious zealot,” he wrote on a Saturday tweet.
He added: “Judge Kacsmaryk made a mockery of the confirmation process and must resign.
According to the article, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ ban on discrimination against patients seeking gender-affirming care or abortions “did not provide a safe haven” for doctors of different faiths “who cannot use their scalpels to make women worship God.” created man, cannot use their syringes to feminize biological men or masculinize biological women, and cannot use their pens to prescribe or dispense abortifacient drugs designed to kill unborn children.”
In this image from a Senate Judiciary Committee video, Matthew Kacsmaryk listens during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Washington’s Capitol Hill, on Dec. 13, 2017. Kacsmaryk, a Texas judge who sparked a legal storm with an unprecedented stoppage ruling of the approval of the nation’s most common method of abortion, Friday, April 7, 2023, is a former attorney for a religious freedom legal group with a long history pursuing conservative causes. (Senate Judiciary Committee via AP)
But Kacsmaryk was removed as the author and his name replaced with the names of two others — Justin E. Butterfield and Stephanie N. Taub — after he sent an email to the magazine’s then-editor requesting the switch before it was published. , according to The Post. In the email, Kacsmaryk cited “reasons that I can discuss at a later date.”
As part of the nomination process, nominees must submit their written and edited work to the Senate Judiciary Committee. But Kacsmaryk failed to include the 2017 piece, The Post claims, raising ethical concerns and questions about his ability to be impartial as a judge.
Hiram Sasser, a spokesperson for First Liberty Institute, a Christian nonprofit legal organization that Kacsmaryk, Butterfield and Taub belonged to, told The Post that Kacsmaryk’s name was used on the article as a “placeholder” and that he was not a “substantive contribution” to the piece.
Sasser told HuffPost that Kacsmaryk “was planning to write an article and he just didn’t have time to get into it. So someone else wrote it and the correct names of people got on the article.”
Sasser continued, “I’m pretty sure he made some sort of edits.”
But the Senate Judiciary Committee is even asking for papers edited by the nominees.
When asked by HuffPost why Kacsmaryk didn’t even discuss his editing role, Sasser added, “I think it’s probably because the only edits he made were maybe some grammar edits or something. Don’t know. Maybe he didn’t do it, didn’t edit it at all. I have no idea. I have no proof at all.” (An email shared with The Post confirms that Kacsmaryk made at least one minor edit.)
Sasser also claimed that the article was only published after the names were switched.
Still, an anonymous source said the “placeholder” action was not specified in advance and the author switch never happened while they were editors at the magazine.
HuffPost also reached out to the Senate Judiciary Committee for information about next steps, but no response has been received. Kacsmaryk also did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
Trump nominated more than 200 conservatives like Kacsmaryk for lifelong judges, which had a substantial impact on the federal judiciary. With the wave of anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion legislation emerging from the right, community members and pro-LGBTQ advocates have expressed concern for the country’s progress and freedom.
“What we have in Texas is a judge who is not guided by science, but is part of an extreme Republican concerted effort to ban abortion across the country,” Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) said of Kacsmaryk to NBC News’ “Meet The Press” on Sunday.
“And we don’t need judges, politicians or governments telling women what kind of health care they can get,” she added.
