Number 13 Janice Rogers Brown

Janice Rogers Brown, California Supreme Court Justice, D.C. Circuit nominee. In her writings and judicial opinions, Justice Brown has demonstrated that she would come to the federal bench with the agenda of radically restricting government protections for ordinary Americans. She has praised Lochner v. New York, the Supreme Court's infamous turn-of-the-century decision striking down a New York state maximum working hours law. The pre-New Deal courts used Lochner and similar cases to invalidate many protections for workers and consumers. Justice Brown calls the Supreme Court's repudiation of Lochner in the 1930s "the triumph of our socialist revolution." No current Supreme Court Justice holds such radical views. Justice Brown also has suggested that the Social Security program is unconstitutional, accusing senior citizens of "blithely cannibaliz[ing] their grandchildren . . . to get as much free stuff" as they can.

Justice Brown's views have influenced her judicial opinions. Dissenting from one decision upholding the constitutionality of a San Francisco law requiring hotel owners to help replace rental properties if they converted rooms from residential to tourist use, she lamented that private property was "dead" in San Francisco and accused the majority of "[t]urning democracy into a kleptocracy." In another case, the majority of the California Supreme Court said that Justice Brown's dissent, which would have invalidated an environmental regulation, ignored precedent to impose "a personal theory of political economy on the people of a democratic state."

Justice Brown also has often issued dissents seeking to limit the reach of California's Fair Employment and Housing Act.

from SAVE OUR COURTS.org