Washington ? Senate Democrats rejected President Bush’s choice of Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen for a U.S. appeals court Thursday, calling her a conservative “judicial activist” who had regularly sided with big business and insurance companies over injured workers and consumers.

The 10-9 party-line vote in the Judiciary Committee marked the second defeat for a Bush court nominee this year.

Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen is sworn in on Capitol Hill, in this July 23, 2002, file photo before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on her nomination to be a judge of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Senate Democrats rejected her Thursday.

However, 79 of Bush’s judicial picks have won the panel’s approval. They include New York Judge Reena Raggi, who was put on the federal bench by President Reagan in 1987. Bush selected her for the U.S. court of appeals in New York, and she won a quick, unanimous approval on Thursday.

But more battles loom for the bitterly divided Judiciary Committee.

Later this month, the panel expects to hold a hearing on Miguel Estrada, a highly regarded and staunchly conservative Washington attorney who was chosen for the U.S. appeals court here. In October, University of Utah Law Professor Michael McConnell is expected to come before the committee. A scholar on religion and the Constitution, McConnell was chosen for the U.S. appeals court in Denver.

With Thursday’s vote, Democrats who hold the slimmest of majorities on the committee said they were sending a message to the White House that conservative “activists” and “ideologues” would face trouble.

“I really hope the administration listens to this vote,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said before voting “no” on Owen’s nomination. President Bush won a close election, she said, and “there is no mandate to skew the courts.”

“Mainstream conservatives will sail through this committee,” said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., noting the Raggi vote. “Activists and ideologues are going to have a more difficult voyage.”

During a daylong hearing in July, the Democrats cited a series of rulings in which Owen, sometimes alone in dissent, voted to reverse jury verdicts in favor of injured persons, workers or consumers. They alleged she bent the law to favor business interests.

In the wake of Enron’s collapse and corporate accounting scandals, Democrats said they were loath to promote what they called a reflexively pro-business judge to the U.S. appeals court.

The president reacted angrily to the vote.

“A handful of senators, acting out of pure politics, did not let this good woman’s name go forward,” Bush said in Louisville, Ky., where he spoke at a Republican fund-raiser. It’s “bad for the country. It’s bad for our bench. And I don’t appreciate it one bit, and neither do the American people.”

Washington is “a tough and ugly town at times. We saw that today,” Bush added.

In March, the committee rejected the appeals court nomination of Mississippi judge Charles W. Pickering, a friend and ally of Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss.

Owen’s defeat was more personal for Bush and his Texas aides. Bush’s political adviser Karl Rove played a key role in Owen’s successful campaign for the Texas Supreme Court in 1994, and Bush named her in his first round of judicial selections. She was slated for the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.