Trump Judge Pick Who Biden Favored Pressed on Anti-Abortion Work

Trump nominee Chad Meredith pledged to set aside his personal beliefs if confirmed to a judgeship after coming under pressure from Senate Democrats over his anti-abortion advocacy.

Meredith said at his confirmation hearing on Wednesday for the US District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky that he’d be “fair minded and even handed with all litigants.”

“I know the difference between being an advocate and being a judge,” he said in touting the support of groups from varied perspectives who he noted recognized that.

Meredith was selected by Trump after progressive pushback on reported plans by then-President Joe Biden to nominate him to the same court in 2022, shortly after the US Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion.

Meredith was Kentucky solicitor general from 2019 to 2021 and previously served as chief deputy general counsel to the state’s Republican governor.

Any deal to nominate Meredith ultimately was scuttled by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) who said then-majority leader and fellow Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell hadn’t consulted him early enough on the selection.

Out-of-State Travel

Judiciary Committee Democrats on Wednesday picked up on Meredith’s past work advocating for Kentucky’s anti-abortion restrictions as gubernatorial legal counsel.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) asked about his defense of a clinic licensing law that ultimately would force some women to travel more than 150 miles to receive an abortion.

Meredith said it was “his recollection” that Supreme Court precedent at the time wouldn’t impose an undue burden on women who had to travel, some out of state.

She moreover pressed him on whether he’d follow the 1965 Supreme Court precedent in Griswold v. Connecticut that protected contraception. Meredith said he’d commit to “follow and abide by all binding” Supreme Court precedents.

He told Klobuchar that as a judge “it would be my obligation to set aside” personal beliefs and policy preferences and “simply follow the law.”