Please urge your Senators to block the confirmation of former Interior Solicitor William Myers to a lifetime position on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. In nearly all cases, this court has the final say in deciding whether to strike down or to enforce environmental protections and other safeguards in nine western states.

William Myers has an extreme record as the Department of the Interior's former top lawyer. While in that position, he repudiated his predecessor's formal legal opinion to clear the way for a previously rejected cyanide heap-leach gold mine that would pollute the environment and destroy the Quechan Indian Tribe's vital sacred sites. In November 2003, federal Judge Henry H. Kennedy, Jr. held that Myers' legal opinion distorted the law to reach a favorable result for the mining company.

In addition, William Myers is overly tied to industries that seek to advance an anti-environmental agenda. As Interior Solicitor, Myers promoted the department's pending industry-friendly revisions to public-land grazing regulations, which tracked changes Myers previously advocated for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. Myers' office also approved, over the objections of a U.S. Attorney, an extraordinary sweetheart deal that rewards, rather than punishes, a rancher who frequently disregards public-land grazing laws.

In his speeches and writings, Myers has displayed open hostility to Congress's authority to protect the environment.  Before joining the Interior Department, Myers unsuccessfully argued in Supreme Court briefs that Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act safeguards were unconstitutional. He asserted to the Court that the Constitutional right of a rancher "to put his property to beneficial use is as fundamental as his right to freedom of speech."  This would elevate ranchers' property rights above almost all other rights, including many aspects of the right to privacy, and would mean that courts should rule for corporate "property rights" challenges to environmental and other safeguards to the same extent that courts protect fundamental rights like free speech. His approach would invalidate as unconstitutional a vast range of labor, health, environmental, disability, civil rights, zoning and other limits on property use.

Myers also compared the government's management of public lands to King George's "tyrannical" rule over the American colonies and claimed that public land safeguards are fueling "a modern-day revolution" in the American West. He denounced the California Desert Protection Act as "an example of legislative hubris."

A substantial number of American Bar Association evaluators rated Myers "not-qualified" for the federal bench, demonstrating that Solicitor Myers was nominated based not on his credentials, but on his extreme ideology.

Senators have a constitutional advise-and-consent duty to ensure that they confirm to lifetime seats on the federal judiciary only those judges who will fairly and impartially interpret the law. William Myers' record demonstrates his open contempt for the laws that protect fundamental American rights and values.

The Senate has confirmed more than 170 of President Bush's judicial nominations, but it has a constitutional duty to reject those who would enact their own extreme political agendas from the bench. The Senate should not confirm William Myers to a lifetime seat on one of our nation's highest courts. Learn more about William Myers by visiting "Judging the Environment," where you can read editorials, letters opposing his nomination, and other background materials.