Neomi Rao at a White House event on Nov. 13, 2018, when President Donald Trump announced her nomination to the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.

WASHINGTON — Neomi Rao — President Donald Trump’s pick for a powerful federal judgeship and a reported US Supreme Court contender — wrote a string of op-eds in college and just after she graduated, at times using inflammatory language to discuss race, date rape, and LGBT rights.

In pieces reviewed by BuzzFeed News that Rao wrote between 1994 and 1996 — she graduated from Yale University in 1995 — she described race as a “hot, money-making issue,” affirmative action as the “anointed dragon of liberal excess,” welfare as being for “for the indigent and lazy,” and LGBT issues as part of “trendy” political movements. On date rape, Rao wrote that if a woman “drinks to the point where she can no longer choose, well, getting to that point was part of her choice.”

Rao is nominated for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s former seat on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. It's an influential court sometimes referred to as the second most important court both because of the cases it hears — it’s the main forum for big fights over government and executive power — and the fact that a number of alumni have landed on the US Supreme Court. Liberal advocacy groups denounced Rao’s nomination the moment Trump announced it in November, pointing to her conservative record. Politico reported last week that Rao had been added to the administration’s list of potential Supreme Court nominees.

Rao has never been a judge, and absent any record on the bench, her writings as a student and later as a prominent law professor, which she submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee, are expected to feature prominently in the fight over her nomination.

Nan Aron, president of the liberal advocacy group Alliance for Justice, which first highlighted Rao’s college writings to BuzzFeed News, said Rao’s columns were “consistent with the administration’s support of candidates who make racially insensitive statements and comments hostile to sexual assault survivors.”

“She shouldn't be awarded a seat on what many view as the second highest court in the country, which is often a stepping stone to the Supreme Court,” Aron said.

Rao currently serves in the Trump administration as head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Justice Department spokesperson Kerri Kupec said in a statement to BuzzFeed News that Rao's writings were “intentionally provocative.”

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“Neomi Rao is a renowned constitutional and administrative law expert. That is why the President nominated her to the D.C. Circuit. The views she expressed a quarter century ago as a college student writing for her student newspaper were intentionally provocative, designed to raise questions and push back against liberal elitism that dominated her campus at the time,” Kupec said. “More than two decades later, her views can be found in her numerous academic articles and speeches. We are confident Ms. Rao will make an exemplary judge on the D.C Circuit.”

“Touchy-feely talk of tolerance”

As an undergraduate student at Yale, Rao published a number of pieces in two campus publications, the Yale Free Press and Yale Herald, as well as in the Washington Times as a journalism fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation. After college, she wrote for the Weekly Standard.



In a July 1994 piece for the Washington Times denouncing “multiculturalists” on campus Rao wrote that, “Underneath their touchy-feely talk of tolerance, they seek to undermine American culture.”

“They argue that culture, society and politics have been defined — and presumably defiled — by white, male heterosexuals hostile to their way of life. For example, homosexuals want to redefine marriage and parenthood; feminists in women's studies programs want to replace so-called male rationality with more sensitive responses common to womyn. It may be kinder and gentler, but can you build a bridge with it?” she wrote.

In the same piece, she used language that became a focus in the ultimately unsuccessful nomination of Ryan Bounds to a seat on the 9th Circuit. Like Bounds did in a piece he wrote as an undergraduate student at Stanford University in 1995, Rao cited a racial slur that she accused others of using.

“Those who reject their assigned categories are called names: So-called conforming blacks are called ‘oreos’ by members of their own community, conservatives become ‘fascists.’ Preaching tolerance, multiculturalists seldom practice it,” Rao wrote.

Bounds’ critics pointed to racially charged language he used in his college writings. Bounds responded by saying he was trying to criticize others who used derogatory language, but also told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he had used “overheated” and “overzealous” language. He was also accused of failing to disclose his college writings to a state nominating committee; he maintained that he had followed all instructions.

Republican Sen. Tim Scott, the only black Republican in the Senate, broke ranks in refusing to support Bounds; he also refused to support North Carolina judicial nominee Thomas Farr and wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal last month saying Republicans “should stop bringing candidates with questionable track records on race before the full Senate for a vote.”

In a 1996 piece in the Weekly Standard critical of the recent work of two black scholars, Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Cornel West, Rao wrote that the two men “position themselves above the corporate hype. Race may be a hot, money-making issue, but even West seems to realize that it can be talked to death.”

In a November 1994 column for the Yale Herald about a rift between a campus LGBT organization and a new group formed by conservative gay students, Rao wrote that, “Trendy political movements have only recently added sexuality to the standard checklist of traits requiring tolerance.”