Amy Coney Barrett Is The Antithesis Of All That RBG Stood For
President Trump’s SCOTUS nominee has the potential to reverse the life’s work of the powerhouse justice that preceded her.
“When there are nine.”
Judge Amy Coney Barrett and her family walk with President Trump ahead of her nomination celebration on Sept. 26. Source: The White House
That was the late Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s response to the question of when there would be enough women on the Supreme Court. Ginsburg’s adage of the impossibility of adequate female representation on the most impactful court in the nation is indisputable. Women belong in all positions of power, and Ginsburg, a powerhouse feminist icon and an American hero who devoted much of her life to the fight for gender equality, immigrant rights, LGBTQ+ rights and other social issues, was living proof of that. America needs more women on the Supreme Court, but not women like Amy Coney Barrett.
The nomination of Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, which came only eight days after the passing of Ginsburg and 38 days before the presidential election, poses a great threat to the rights that the late Justice dedicated her career to protecting. If Barrett became a justice on the Supreme Court, she would tilt the balance of the court far to the right, putting the future of reproductive rights, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), immigrant’s rights, DACA safeguards and LGBTQ+ rights all at stake. As the ideological opposite of Ginsburg, her confirmation would be the doomsday that progressives, underrepresented populations and Ginsburg herself, whose dying wish was to not be replaced until the end of Trump’s presidency, have feared.
Barrett, the youngest judge ever nominated to the court and a devout Catholic, is the dream candidate for conservatives. Guided by her religion and far-right views, Barrett checks off all the boxes for the religious right. Her interpretations of the Constitution align closely with that of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, and Barrett, a former clerk for the conservative justice, said at her now-notorious “super-spreader” nomination event that “his judicial philosophy is mine too.”
Judge Amy Coney Barrett speaks alongside President Trump at her nomination event in the Rose Garden on Sept. 26. Source: The White House
While Barrett remains reserved in speaking directly about her views on reproductive rights, she has indicated her opinion through her actions. In 2006, Barrett and her husband signed a statement from an anti-abortion group calling for an end to Roe v. Wade, in which she affirmed that she opposed “abortion on demand” and defended “the right to life from fertilization to the end of natural life.” It is presumable that Barrett, not only a former member of Notre Dame’s Faculty for Life but also as someone who has written that Supreme Court precedents are not sacrosanct, would vote in favor of abortion limitations if the opportunity arose. President Trump also stated in a 2016 presidential debate that he would only appoint pro-life judges who would honor the commitment to reversing the landmark decision.
“She has made clear she would invalidate the ACA and take health care away from millions of people and undermine a woman’s reproductive freedom.””
Barrett’s academic writings and past rulings also indicate her disagreement on current and more progressive healthcare policies. In an essay from 2017, she wrote that Chief Justice John Roberts “pushed the Affordable Care Act beyond its plausible meaning to save the statute.” The judge’s hinted distaste of the decade-old law is alarming for the more than 20 million Americans who gained health care coverage under the ACA, especially since the Supreme Court is expected to hear a case challenging the constitutionality of the 2010 statute a week after the Nov. 3 election.
“Amy Coney Barrett meets Donald Trump’s two main litmus tests: She has made clear she would invalidate the ACA and take health care away from millions of people and undermine a woman’s reproductive freedom,” Nan Aron said, the president of Alliance for Justice.
Another major threat of Barrett’s nomination is to marriage equality and rights for LGBTQ+ individuals, as her traditional views and skepticism of Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized gay marriage, implies her predicted vote against LGBTQ+ people. Barrett has openly defended the dissenters in Obergefell v. Hodges and proposed during a lecture at Jacksonville University that lawmakers should reconsider protections afforded to transgender individuals under Title IX. Obergefell was only decided by a margin of one vote, and considering that two of the justices that voted in favor of marriage equality have since left the court, the 2015 decision and other protections for LGBTQ+ individuals face the risk of being overturned by the now overwhelmingly conservative majority.
If confirmed, Barrett has the alarming potential to undo Ginsburg’s life’s work in defending reproductive freedom and a woman's right to her own body, as well as ensuring social justice for oppressed populations. Though no one could expect Trump to nominate someone consistent with Ginsburg’s progressive values, Barrett’s lengthy record of opposing such freedoms is a direct dishonor of the late Justice’s work, and this SCOTUS choice puts the rights of millions of Americans on the line.
To unfairly seek to fill Justice Ginsburg’s vacant seat in the final weeks before an election with her ideological counterpart, a woman against all that Ginsburg stood for, is a disrespect to her legacy and highlights the hypocrisy of the GOP, who only oppose filling a Supreme Court seat in an election year when doing so would benefit their political rivals. Barrett has the potential to slam shut the doors that Ginsburg opened for women and minorities across the nation, and it is apparent that the fight for our rights is ahead.