NCJW opposes Kathleen Lane. Here’s why:
NCJW opposes Katie Lane. Her qualifications are sorely lacking in every respect. She only has nine years of legal experience, less than the American Bar Association’s recommended 12 years for a federal judgeship. Her record calls into question her fairness, independence, and fidelity to constitutional values. She received a rare public rebuke and punishment by a judge for disobeying court orders and misrepresenting facts to a court.
Kathleen Lane’s Stance on important issues:
Reproductive Rights
As an assistant solicitor general in Montana, Katie Lane was involved in urging the Montana Supreme Court to overturn a decades-old precedent that created the state constitutional right to abortion in order to protect three extreme anti-abortion laws passed by the Montana legislature. The Montana Supreme Court unanimously struck down the three laws. In private practice, she was counsel in a case that blocked access to abortion care in Guam three decades after a permanent injunction blocked Guam’s total ban on abortion.
LGBTQ+ Rights
During her time at the Montana Attorney General’s office, Lane argued that a man who had been convicted in Idaho for having consensual sex with another man under outdated and overturned anti-sodomy laws should have to register as a sex offender in Montana despite the US Supreme Court’s decision years earlier in Lawrence v. Texas.
Voting Rights
Lane defended a racially gerrymandered county redistricting map where a federal district court found “powerful circumstantial evidence of racial gerrymandering.” She also defended a Montana law that imposed criminal penalties on those who were registered in more than one state even if they did not cast a ballot in another state. A federal district court enjoined enforcement of the law because it had a chilling effect on voter registration in cases where a voter had not double voted or intended to do so.
Education and Career Highlights:
Lane received her BA in Economics from Furman University in 2014 and a JD from the George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School in 2017. From 2017 to 2020 she clerked at the Senate Judiciary Committee for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), the District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee, and the Tenth Circuit Court. She worked for one year at Jones Day, after which she was deputy solicitor general in Montana from 2021-2023. Afterwards she worked for two years as an associate at Consovoy McCarthy PLLC in Arlington, Virginia, and most recently was senior legal counsel at the Republican National Committee.