The Case Against Judge Ryskamp

The Senate Judiciary Committee has confirmed all 76 candidates that President Bush has named to the federal bench. But the committee should reject the nomination of U.S. District Judge Kenneth L. Ryskamp to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

A Reagan appointee to the Miami bench, Ryskamp has an appalling record on civil rights. According to testimony at his confirmation hearings, Judge Ryskamp ruled against civil-rights plaintiffs far more often than other federal judges. His statements in and out of court are alarming. In a 1987 trial, he spoke approvingly of a police-dog attack on two men who were never charged with any crime, saying that their scars might deter them from future crime. And in questioning by Senate aides prior to his nomination hearings, he made statements that deeply offended Latinos. “Miami is like a foreign country,” he said, defending an English-only policy once imposed at the restricted club to which he belonged. “Members just wanted a place where we didn’t have to hear Spanish.”

In a case brought by a lawyer allegedly fired in part for describing the community where he worked as “Colored Town,” Ryskamp said, “I can’t believe that people are so thin-skinned that the term Colored Town is going to be highly offensive.”

The appeals court he has been tapped to join, which includes Georgia, Alabama and Florida, has reversed Ryskamp 17 times in his four years on the bench. He has twice as many constitutional-rights reversals as any other Bush nominee to the appellate court and lacks the qualities for the appellate bench. The federal court deserves far better.