Senate Panel Delays Vote on Kozinski’s Nomination to 9th Circuit Court

The Senate Judiciary Committee delayed a vote Thursday on President Reagan’s controversial nomination of Alex Kozinski to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco after opponents tried to prevent the 34-year-old nominee from taking his place as the nation’s youngest federal appellate court judge.

The committee had been expected to recommend Senate confirmation of Kozinski, now chief judge of the U.S. Claims Court and former special counsel to the Merit Systems Protection Board. But the vote was deferred for one week, without discussion, at the request of Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill).

The nomination had come under sharp attack at a hearing Wednesday from opponents who criticized Kozinski’s lack of experience and his performance as the merit systems board counsel. A second hearing may be scheduled early next week, committee aides said.

Kozinski, a committed judicial conservative, is one of several nominations Reagan is expected to make to the 9th Circuit before his term ends. The 28-member court, covering California and eight other Western states, is regarded as one of the most liberal appellate benches in the nation.

Protect ‘Whistle Blowers’

At Wednesday’s hearing, spokesmen for two groups focused their attack on Kozinski’s 14-month tenure as the merit systems board’s special counsel, an office created along with the board in 1978 to protect “whistle blowers”--federal employees who report government waste, fraud and mismanagement.

They said he failed to defend such employees and instead helped federal managers get rid of workers without being charged with improper personnel practices.

Robert M. Tobias, president of the 120,000-member National Treasury Employees Union, assailed Kozinski’s “lack of any meaningful or relevant judicial experience,” as well as his performance as the merit systems board’s special counsel.

“He has apparently never tried a case by himself,” Tobias said.

Thomas M. Devine, legal director of the Government Accountability Project, a private group that aids whistle blowers, cited complaints from employees who worked for Kozinski that he had openly humiliated them and showed little tolerance for dissent.

Kozinski told the committee that he was aware of the criticism but that he was forced to take “bold steps” to improve the performance of an office that was “in disarray” when he took over. He vigorously defended his effort to protect whistle blowers.

‘The Best We Could’

“I worked hard,” he said. “We did the very best we could with the tools at our disposal.”

Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.), supporting the nomination along with Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.), cited Kozinski’s “outstanding record,” including graduating first in his class at UCLA Law School in 1975.

Simon expressed reservations about the nomination, however, reporting that an American Bar Assn. committee that screens judicial nominees had rated Kozinski only as “qualified” for the job--the lowest approval rating--with a minority calling him “not qualified.”

Kozinski, born in Bucharest, Romania, immigrated with his parents at age 12, eventually settling in Los Angeles. After graduation from UCLA, he was a law clerk for Judge Anthony M. Kennedy of the 9th Circuit and for U.S. Chief Justice Warren E. Burger before entering private law practice in 1977.

He served in President Reagan’s 1980 campaign and was assistant counsel to the President before taking the job as special counsel in 1981. Reagan named him to the claims court in 1982.