Undeterred by the Senate Judiciary Committee’s rejection of two of his Far Right nominees to serve as federal appeals court judges, a determined George W. Bush is now trying to appoint a law professor who opposed a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling that withheld the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University because it discriminated against African-Americans.

On Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee began hearings on the nomination of Michael McConnell to become a member of the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Denver. McConnell is a law professor at the University of Utah.

In a 1983 ruling, by a vote of 8-1, the Supreme Court held that the Internal Revenue Service was correct in denying tax-exempt status to Bob Jones University because its policies violated the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Initially, the private conservative, evangelical university in Greenville, S.C., refused to admit any African-Americans. But it later revised its policies to admit Blacks as long as they did not date or marry across racial lines, a prohibition that was eventually dropped.

At the time of the suit, Bob Jones University regulations stated:

*There is to be no interracial dating

* Students who are members of or affiliated with any group or organization which holds as one of its goals or advocates interracial marriage will be expelled.

* Students who date outside of their own race will be expelled.

* Students who espouse, promote, or encourage others to violate the University’s dating rules and regulations will be expelled.

When the Internal Revenue Service notified the university that it would no longer be considered a tax-exempt charitable organization under section 501 (c )(3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 as long as its discriminatory policies were in place, the university went to court. A district court in South Carolina sided with the school. However, an appeals court and, later, the U.S. Supreme Court, ruled in favor of the IRS. Only William Rehnquist, who is now the chief justice of the Supreme Court, dissented in the case.

The court’s majority concluded that all three levels of the federal government had made it clear that there is a national policy against racial discrimination in education and that the federal government has a direct interest in eradicating discrimination, even in religious schools.

McConnell, the president’s choice to sit on the nation’s second-highest court, cited the ruling an egregious example of the Supreme Court’s failure to “intervene to protect religious freedom from the heavy hand of government.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee is evaluating McConnell’s fitness for the job. He signed a petition calling on Congress to pass a Constitutional amendment outlawing all abortions, wrote a brief for the Supreme Court arguing that the Boy Scouts had a constitutional right to discriminate against gays and wants to further destroy the wall in the constitution separating state and church.

Civil rights activists are citing the nomination of McConnell as yet another example of Bush’s determination to appoint federal judges whose views are far right of American mainstream opinion.

“On too many constitutional rights and civil liberties issues, Michael McConnell may be the most dangerous Bush administration judicial nominee to come before the Judiciary Committee,” says Ralph G. Neas, president of People For the American Way. “His longstanding views on some fundamental constitutional and legal principles are to the right even of the most conservative justices now on the Supreme Court.”

Barry Lynn, of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, says McConnell is so extreme that he makes failed Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork “look moderate.”

After the Senate Judiciary Committee had rejected the nominations of District Judge Charles W. Pickering Sr. of Mississippi and, more recently, Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen, who was even to the right of Bush’s appointees on the state court, one would expect that Bush would nominate judges with more mainstream views. But his nomination of Pickering, Owen and McConnell to serve as appeals court judges underscores his determination to pack the courts with rabid Right-wingers.

Bush was made acutely aware of Bob Jones’ history in March 2000 when he was campaigning for president. Bush decided to give a speech at the university during the South Carolina Republican primary even though the school had not yet lifted its ban on interracial dating.

Bush’s decision to speak at Bob Jones reminds me of Ronald Reagan’s decision to kick off his 1980 presidential campaign with a speech at the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia, Miss., the site where the bodies of three civil rights workers—James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman—were recovered in 1964. They were part of Freedom Summer, a project to help African-Americans vote in Mississippi.

Reagan’s decision to go to Philadelphia, Miss., and George W. Bush’s decision to speak at Bob Jones University spoke volumes. And so does Bush’s decision to nominate a lawyer who feels that the university’s discriminatory polices should be subsidized by taxpayers’ dollars.