Columbia Standard

WASHINGTON – In response to questions from U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, President Biden’s nominee for a U.S. District Court Judge for the Southern District of New York claimed that she has "never studied" biology and does not understand how sex is determined.

At her nomination hearing, Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn was questioned about her 2022 recommendation that a biological male, who is a convicted pedophile and child rapist, "be immediately transferred to a women’s facility" over the objections of the Bureau of Prisons.

The individual in question was previously convicted and sentenced to decades in state prison for molesting a 9-year-old boy and raping a 17-year-old girl. Following release in 2015, the inmate was again sentenced in 2017 to 15 years in federal prison for distributing child sexual abuse material.

Ranking Member Graham asked, “In your Report & Recommendation, you open your ‘Factual Background’ section by stating: ‘At birth, people are typically assigned a gender.’ … Is it possible to determine a person’s sex by only analyzing their chromosomes?”

Netburn responded, “I have never studied biology and therefore I am unqualified to answer this question.”

To read Netburn’s responses to full questions for the record, click HERE.

Background on Netburn:

Sarah Netburn has served as a magistrate judge for 12 years. In 2022 she concluded that a 6’2” biological male, serial child sex abuser who began identifying as a woman at the age of 51 should be transferred to a federal women’s prison—against the recommendation by the Bureau of Prisons. The inmate was previously convicted of raping a 17-year-old girl, molesting a 9-year-old boy and distributing child sexual abuse material.

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