Joseph Bianco, left, and Michael Park, right, testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee during their confirmation hearing to be U.S. circuit judges for the Second Circuit, on Wednesday, Feb. 13, 2019. Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM

A federal appeals court pick nominated by President Donald Trump encountered heat in a Senate confirmation hearing after Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee protested proceeding with the hearing over the objections of the nominee's home-state senators.

The panel held a hearing Wednesday for two nominees to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit: Michael Park, a name partner at Consovoy McCarthy Park, and Joseph Bianco, a federal trial judge in the Eastern District of New York. Neither Bianco nor Park have received blue slips from their home-state senators, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-New York, who recently jumped into the 2020 presidential race.

Schumer, in remarks on the Senate floor, decried the move to proceed with their nominations. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island, on the committee lamented the diminished role of home-state senators in the selection of circuit court picks as a “terrible mistake.”

Park faces particularly fierce opposition from Democrats and liberal groups, over his past work at Consovoy McCarthy, a firm with deep ties to the conservative legal establishment. Schumer described the nominee as working “on the front lines of the effort to dismantle affirmative action policies in education.”

Park is one of the lead attorneys representing Students for Fair Admissions, a group challenging Harvard University's affirmative action policies in a hot-button, closely watched case. The group claims the Ivy League school's admissions practices discriminate against Asian-American applicants. A federal judge in Boston heard closing arguments in the case Wednesday.

The nominee proceeded cautiously while discussing the suit, noting that it was still being litigated. But he spoke broadly about his experience dealing with stereotypes as an Asian-American.

“Personally, it's something that I've experienced as an Asian-American in applying for schools,” Park said. “And my role in that case involved speaking to dozens of students and families and seeing their sort of idealism and being somewhat disheartened by what they experienced as an unfair opportunity in education because of their skin color. So that's what I'll say about that.”

Park said Wednesday the Supreme Court has held that colleges are permitted to use race as a factor in admissions, so long as they satisfy a standard of strict scrutiny. But speaking broadly again about his personal experience as an Asian-American, Park said Wednesday the use of race in some schools' admission policies had the “unfortunate impact of reinforcing” stereotypes.

Park's nomination has also fallen under scrutiny for his representation in cases involving other right-leaning interests. The nominee authored an amicus brief for Project on Fair Representation, defending the Trump administration's controversial decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. A federal judge in the New York lawsuit struck down the question's addition. The Supreme Court could decide this week whether it will take up an appeal of that judge's ruling.

A team of D.C.-based lawyers at Consovoy McCarthy represents Trump in a lawsuit accusing him of unconstitutionally accepting gifts and so-called emoluments from foreign and domestic officials who patronize his Washington, D.C., hotel.

Park said Wednesday he'd recuse himself from matters involving his firm for “some period of time.”

Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, introduced Bianco and Park, respectively, Wednesday. Lee highlighted Park's past clerkships for Samuel Alito, first when Alito was a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and later when Alito was elevated to the Supreme Court. Lee, himself, clerked for Alito at the high court.

Park, before joining Consovoy McCarthy, worked at Dechert's New York office, serving as counsel from 2009 to 2011 and a partner from 2012 to 2015. He also spent two years as an attorney-adviser in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, and four years as an associate at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr's New York offices.

Park's financial disclosure, which he was required to submit for his nomination, reveals he earned around $580,000 from his firm partnership in 2018; he made around $373,000 in 2017. Park also made about $80,000 both years in teaching income as an adjunct professor at the Antonin Scalia Law School.

Bianco joined the federal bench in 2006 as an appointee of President George W. Bush, after serving as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department's Criminal Division. Before that, he spent most of his career as a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, rising at one point to become chief of the unit prosecuting crimes related to the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

The judiciary panel also heard from three federal district court nominees Wednesday: Greg Guidry, nominated to a seat in the Eastern District of Louisiana; Michael Liburdi, nominated to the District of Arizona; and Peter Welte, to the District of North Dakota.