By Nate Raymond
March 17 (Reuters) – A conservative legal activist won U.S. Senate approval Tuesday to become a federal judge in Louisiana, despite objections by Democrats and a former Fox News host over testimony she gave five years ago opposing a ban on mandatory arbitration for workplace sexual assault or harassment claims.
The Republican-led U.S. Senate voted 51-45 to confirm Anna St. John, the president and general counsel of the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute, to a seat on the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Louisiana.
Republican President Donald Trump announced St. John’s nomination in a January social media post that touted her “strong record of tirelessly fighting to protect Free Speech, champion Religious Liberty, and keep men out of women’s sports.”
The New Orleans-based lawyer has worked since 2015 at legal activist Ted Frank’s Center for Class Action Fairness, now part of the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute, helping advance its campaign against class action settlements it says benefits lawyers while delivering little to no relief to consumers.
“She knows our Constitution like the back of her hand and has the smarts and experience to be a great, fair judge,” Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement on Tuesday.
Her nomination was opposed by Democrats including Senator Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, who during a hearing earlier this month said her “record reflects a partisan ideology and raises serious questions about her ability to impartially administer justice.”
He pointed to opposition to her nomination from former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson, who a decade ago filed a high-profile lawsuit accusing Roger Ailes, Fox News’ former chief executive, of sexual harassment. Ailes, who died in 2017, denied the claims.
Carlson in an opinion piece she co-wrote that was published online January 29 by the progressive group Alliance for Justice Action claimed that St. John while testifying before Congress had sought to “gaslight” women seeking to eradicate forced arbitration following the onset of the #MeToo movement.
The bipartisan Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act was passed by Congress in 2022 and bans companies from forcing employees who allege sexual assault or harassment to settle their claims with an arbitrator without the option of filing a lawsuit.
St. John testified in November 2021 before the U.S. House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee against the bill, saying in a written submission that arbitration can be a faster, less expensive way to resolve disputes, “even when serious harms such as sexual harassment and assault are at issue.”
Asked during a February 4 hearing about her testimony, St. John again defended arbitration, saying it “can be beneficial and that it can result, and often does result, in much higher recoveries for plaintiffs and sexual assault survivors.”
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(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston)
