BYU attorney bench bound?

WASHINGTON — In what could be seen as an olive branch to the Republican majority, Democrats are signaling they will not filibuster the nomination of Brigham Young University general counsel Tom Griffith to the Washington, D.C., federal court of appeals, considered to be the second-highest court in the land.

On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 14-4 to approve Griffith, one of President Bush's controversial judicial nominees. His nomination was delayed when he was targeted by Democrats last year when the nomination was first offered.

"My colleagues recognize what I've known all along: Tom Griffith is a skilled, thoughtful and experienced lawyer who will make a great judge for the D.C. circuit," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and past chairman of the Judiciary Committee. "This important court can really use a good man and able lawyer like Tom."

The four opposition votes came from Democrats, even though several Democrats voted for the nomination. A spokeswoman for the Judiciary Committee Democrats said that only those nominations opposed by all Democrats on the committee would be opposed on the Senate floor.

Griffith is well-known to senators, and his nomination is expected to be approved when it comes to the Senate floor for a vote.

Before becoming general counsel at BYU, Griffith served as counsel to the U.S. Senate from 1995 to 1999, a period that included the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton.

"Tom's a member of the Senate family, and he impressed a lot of people here with his great confidence, skill and impeccable integrity," Hatch said.

Opponents attacked Griffith on a number of fronts — that he was too conservative, that he would be unable to separate his religious beliefs from the law and that he was hostile to women's athletic programs.

The National Women's Law Center has attacked Griffith, a commissioner on the Secretary of Education's Commission on Opportunity in Athletics, for recommending the elimination of the Title IX "proportionality" provision that allows colleges and universities to meet the requirements of the law by offering athletic opportunities to male and female students in proportion to each gender's representation in the student body.

And Griffith was still being criticized Thursday for allowing his membership in the District of Columbia Bar Association to lapse, and for never joining the Utah State Bar while acting in a legal capacity as BYU general counsel.

Opponents to the nomination have latched onto both issues as reasons Griffith should be rejected.

Griffith said he does not recall getting his 1998 bar renewal notice, and when he left the Senate a year later for private practice he made an erroneous assumption the law firm took care of the dues, as had other law firms he had worked for in the past.

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E-mail: spang@desnews.com