Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

guest column:

Students can’t ignore their responsibilities; why can Congress?

As a person who has been teaching for 25 years — the past 15 as a high school English teacher in Las Vegas — I remain devoted to my profession. Each new class of students brings new challenges and rewards.

I also realize there are aspects of my work that are not so amazing, but I carry out my duties because they are part of my job. The task I hate the most? Marking down every student who is tardy. I hate it. It’s stupid. But I deal with it.

But at least the students show up. I can’t say the same for the Republicans who run the Senate and are acting like schoolkids or worse. Like schoolyard bullies, they are refusing to hold a hearing or schedule a vote by the full Senate on the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland for the U.S. Supreme Court. Most won’t even meet with him.

My message to Nevada’s Republican senator, Dean Heller, and to the party leaders he is faithfully following is simple: Deal with it. Do your job.

When I heard Judge Garland’s nomination was being blocked, I thought, “This must be a joke.” I don’t understand why they’re thinking we are not supposed to have a Supreme Court justice. Avoiding your constitutional duty is not an option, just like I don’t have the option of ignoring tardy slips.

Even more absurd is the GOP’s reason for the delay.

In the days after President Barack Obama picked Judge Garland — someone who previously won Senate confirmation with support from both parties — Sen. Heller said, “I think the American people ought to have a chance to make that decision” and wait until the next presidential election to pick the next justice.

Does that mean that the last election did not count? The one that re-elected President Obama, who did his job by appointing Judge Garland? The election I voted in? To me, that’s a stinging slap in the face to voters.

It’s also a rebuke to taxpayers who pay the lawmakers’ salaries and those of their staffs. As I was filing my federal tax return recently, I came across a startling statistic: The cost of GOP senators for American taxpayers is $1.3 million every single day. That’s the amount of taxpayer dollars senators waste when they avoid doing the jobs we elected them to do.

At the most fundamental level, it is easy to see why most U.S. voters want the Senate to do its job and vote on Judge Garland’s nomination.

For me, it is personal. I do not want the Supreme Court to become horribly politicized. The decisions it has made throughout history — about access to education and a woman’s right to choose, to name just two — are important to me as an educator and as a woman.

The case now pending before the court, to allow the Obama administration to grant temporary relief to undocumented immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for years, affects my job as a teacher and as the wife of a naturalized citizen from El Salvador.

Every class I teach has at least 10 undocumented students who have been here since they were 2, 3, 4 years old. When someone says, “Go back to where you came from,” that means Las Vegas for these students, because it’s the only home they know.

Were they to have to return to El Salvador, which I’m familiar with through my husband, I would fear they would be going back to face death because of the violence there.

Senators, and aspiring senators running for the open seat in Nevada, should not forget that this is not a Republican issue or a Democrat issue. This is a human-rights issue. We need a full court on the Supreme Court to administer the justice our constitution envisioned.

Avoiding your duty as a lawmaker is not an option. Do your job.

Tillie Torres teaches English at Valley High School in Las Vegas.

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