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New York State is drawing mockery after the chief judge of its highest court appointed “Sex and the City” actress Cynthia Nixon to a commission that screens and recommends candidates for the state’s top judicial posts.
Nixon, who played attorney Miranda Hobbes on the 2000s hit series, will be one of four members of the 12-seat Commission on Judicial Nomination that are required to not be licensed members of the New York State Bar to practice law in the Empire State.
She was appointed Thursday by Chief Judge Rowan Wilson.
“Only in Kathy Hochul’s New York could playing a lawyer on HBO qualify you to pick the judges on our state’s highest court,” Rep. Michael Lawler, R-N.Y., told Fox News Digital on Monday.
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“Selecting far-left activist actress Cynthia Nixon to help select New York’s top judges will not bring ‘Justice In The City,’” remarked the National Review’s John Fund in a tweet.
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley added on X that the move is the latest in a pattern wherein the “New York legal system continues to make a parody of itself.”
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Other online critics mocked the fact Nixon’s character was a lawyer but that she is not one in real life.
One posted an image of “ER” actor Noah Wyle – who played a doctor — riffing that he could be the next Surgeon General. “I played the part of an astronaut in a school play when I was maybe 10 years old. Should I prepare my resume for NASA?” another wrote.
Saritha Komatireddy, the Republican challenging state Attorney General Letitia James, said that appointing a “celebrity activist with zero legal background to help shape the future of our judiciary sends the wrong message entirely.”
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“This is part of a broader trend in New York: politics increasingly taking precedence over public safety and common sense,” Komatireddy told the New York Post.
Nixon is aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America and unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2018 in a primary against Andrew Cuomo.
She campaigned for former Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2013 and current Mayor Zohran Mamdani in 2025.
At least one Democrat also sounded off against Nixon’s appointment, appearing to blame farther-left members of his party for dispensing with Gov. Kathy Hochul’s original nominee to Rowan’s seat.
“The price New Yorkers will pay for the bigots and haters who took out the immensely qualified Justice LaSalle is that Cynthia Nixon now gets to vet the judiciary. Excelsior!” tweeted Assemb. Kalman Yeger, D-Borough Park, riffing on the state’s “Ever Upward” slogan at the end.
Hochul settled on Wilson after New York State Senate Democrats torpedoed her nomination of fellow Democrat Hector LaSalle to lead the court’s highest bench for appearing too conservative and amid opposition from activist and labor groups.
Republicans will also get their shot at appointing a member to the commission alongside Nixon.
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State Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt, R-Niagara Falls, has been allotted one appointment following a recent retirement vacancy, according to the Albany Times-Union.
Fox News Digital reached out to Nixon via the Commission and the Senate Republicans’ office for comment.
The top Republican on the New York Senate Judiciary Committee told Fox News Digital that Nixon’s pick should “alarm every New Yorker” that political activism appears to be “a requirement for consideration to serve on the bench.”
“The appointment of a far-left, non-lawyer, Hollywood actress to the Commission on Judicial Nomination further reinforces the fact that the courts of New York have become entirely partisan,” said Sen. Anthony Palumbo of Suffolk.
“We should all be outraged by the abuse of this branch of government that is supposed to be immune from politics.”
With Nixon now serving on the commission, she will help evaluate and recommend future Court of Appeals nominees to the governor, a role that could allow progressive critics’ objections to LaSalle to continue influencing the state’s highest court long after that confirmation fight ended.
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