Nate Raymond
March 17 (Reuters) – A conservative legal activist was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on Tuesday to become a federal judge in Louisiana, despite objections from Democrats and former Fox News hosts over her testimony 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, president and general counsel of the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute, to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.
Republican President Donald Trump announced St. John’s nomination in a January social media post, praising her “track record of fighting tirelessly to protect free speech, defend religious liberty, and prevent men from participating in women’s sports.”
The New Orleans-based attorney has been with legal activist Ted Frank’s Center for Class Action Fairness, now part of the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute, since 2015, helping advance the campaign against class-action settlements that it says benefit lawyers but provide little relief to consumers.
“She knows our Constitution inside out and has the wisdom and experience to be a great, fair judge,” Sen. John Kennedy, R-Louisiana, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement Tuesday.
Her nomination has faced opposition from Democrats, including Sen. Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, who said at a hearing earlier this month that her “record reflects partisan ideology and raises serious questions about her ability to impartial justice.”
He noted that former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson, who filed a high-profile lawsuit a decade ago accusing former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes of sexual harassment, opposed her nomination. Ayers, who died in 2017, denied the claims.
Carlson claimed in an op-ed she co-wrote and published online on Jan. 29 by the progressive group Justice Action Alliance that St. John tried to “inflame” women who are seeking to eradicate forced arbitration in the wake of the #MeToo movement during testimony before Congress.
Congress passed the bipartisan Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Harassment Act in 2022, which prohibits companies from forcing employees who allege sexual assault or harassment to resolve claims with an arbitrator, without the option of filing a lawsuit.
St. John testified against the bill before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee in November 2021, saying in a written opinion that arbitration can be a faster and cheaper way to resolve disputes “even when there are issues of serious harm such as sexual harassment and sexual assault.”
Asked about her testimony during the Feb. 4 hearing, St. John again defended arbitration, saying it “can be beneficial and can (and often does) result in higher compensation for plaintiffs and sexual assault survivors.”
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(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston)
