CERTAIN
Coalition to End Racial Targeting
American Indian Nations
This page is currently under construction.
CERTAIN opposes the nomination of former Senator Slade Gorton to ANY federal judgeship, but particularly to any position on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Gorton's history of anti-Indian bias during his tenure as Attorney General of Washington State and his tenure as Senator from that state, in the form of repeated legal and legislative attacks on American Indian sovereignty (particularly the often-underhanded methods he used in the Senate, attaching riders to otherwise innocuous legislation to destroy tribal sovereign immunity), and his intimate associations with the so-called "Wise-Use" movement and anti-treaty rights groups, indicate strongly that he would carry his campaign of anti-tribal, anti-treaty, and anti-Indian activism to the federal courts.
Gorton would probably like - more than anything - to be seated on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals bench, eagerly awaiting a case brought by a group such as United Property Owners of Washington (or another of that ilk) that would allow him the opportunity to undo the justice brought to Indians of Washington by US v. Washington, 384 F. Supp. 312,
327 (W.D. Wash. 1974), the case in which Gorton, as Washington Attorney General, had, in non-judicial parlance, his clock cleaned.
We at CERTAIN believe that President Bush - who has demonstrably negated his own claim to be a "uniter, not a divider" - would support his ally, Slade Gorton, in a twisted attempt at revenge against the Indians of Washington (and Native Alaskans, Native Hawaiians, tribes of Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and California as well, all in the 9th Circuit's jurisdiction).
This page will grow, as tribes and other groups release statements opposing Gorton's appointment to the bench.
