What Amy Coney Barrett’s Confirmation Could Mean
On October 26, 2020, the Senate voted 52-48 in favor of confirming President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, judge Amy Coney Barrett, as the 155th Justice of the United States Supreme Court. The following day, just one week before the 2020 election, 48-year-old Amy Barrett was sworn in by Chief Justice John Roberts to become the youngest woman to serve on the Supreme Court. Like many of today’s issues, the nomination resulted in greatly divided opinions across the country. Justice Barrett’s youth implies that she may occupy the seat for several decades. Her appointment also comes at a crucial time for many cases that have the potential to turn the political tide on key issues, making this appointment very concerning.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg passed away only six weeks before the 2020 election due to complications from cancer. According to her granddaughter, her deathbed wish was for the new president to appoint her successor, a sentiment that has been ignored by Senate Republicans. Their hypocrisy became obvious when many backtracked on their statements from 2016, where the Obama administration attempted to fill Justice Antonin Scalia's vacant seat eight months prior to the election. Despite Democrats’ push for the vote to be postponed until after the election, they have been unable to prevent Republicans from proceeding with the confirmation.
Justice Amy Barrett is known as a protégé of late Justice Antonin Scalia, for whom she worked as a judicial clerk. After her time as a clerk, she also worked as a law professor at the Notre Dame Law School for around two decades. Then, in 2017, she was nominated by President Trump to the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in 2017, where she worked for three years. Despite her strong judicial career, Barrett has limited experience in court as an actual judge and has never tried a case in the Supreme Court before. This is a great contrast to the legacy of her predecessor RBG, who rose to fame for her landmark Supreme Court cases on gender equality before becoming a justice herself.
Furthermore, Justice Barrett's appointment gives the Supreme Court a 6-3 conservative lean. According to the Guardian, based on her past academic papers and time in the circuit, Amy Barrett’s views are “almost certainly far to the right of the average American.” This is especially worrisome for cases like the Affordable Care Act, those dealing with racial injustice, and a retrial of Roe v. Wade, all of which are expected to face SCOTUS soon.
During past debates, both Biden and Harris expressed concern with regard to the security of the Affordable Care Act given Justice Barrett's conservative stance. Currently, the pending case challenging the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is California v. Texas. The ACA was signed into law by President Obama in 2010 and was brought to the Supreme Court for a second time since 2012. This case, created after another failed attempt by Republicans to dismantle the ACA in 2017, targets the language of its individual mandate. After Congress voted to eliminate the tax penalty for not purchasing insurance in 2017, Republicans took the act to the courts, arguing that the language in the mandate, which said individuals “shall” buy insurance, indicated a lack of choice and thus claimed the ACA to be coercive. A New Yorker article concluded that based on Amy Barrett's past written work from 2017, her opinion seemed to lean more towards the Republican side even if she claimed in her hearings that she was not hostile towards the ACA.
If ACA were to be repealed now, around 21 million people would lose healthcare, including 12 million low-income families who depend on Medicaid. Additionally, those with pre-existing conditions, an estimated 133 million people under 65, have a higher risk of being denied healthcare. For many young adults under 26, this could also mean losing coverage from their parents’ insurance plans. A possible overturn of the healthcare act, especially during a global pandemic and a period of high unemployment, is bad timing overall for Americans.
Similarly, with the recent growth of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) Movement, some of Barrett’s past decisions appear less favorable for BLM supporters. The Guardian highlighted examples of Barrett often siding with the police in cases of excessive force, for instance in Torry, et al v City of Chicago, where officers stopped a group of black men despite having no evidence against them. Similarly, in United States v Wilson, Barrett concluded that officers were reasonable for using force on a black man, despite failing to confirm whether the bulge in his pocket was a weapon.
Another landmark case significant to today’s political climate is Roe v. Wade, an over 50-year-old case where the Supreme Court ruled that the constitution protects women’s rights to have an abortion. For years, many pro-life activists and conservatives aimed to overturn the case, aiming instead to leave it up to states to decide their policy on abortion. While Barrett dodged giving a clear answer on her stance during her nomination hearings, her past actions indicate that she is against abortion.
Amy Barrett had been a member of an anti-abortion rights faculty group at Notre Dame and previously signed a letter criticizing Roe v. Wade. Barrett, when questioned about it, said she only signed it then as “it was consistent with the views of my church.” While her nomination received positive reactions from religiously conservative groups, the case’s potential overturn would be damaging for women’s rights. Many states already have legislation that makes it harder for women to receive adequate birth control or the ability to opt for an abortion. An overturn of Roe could result in less protection for women and more restrictive legislation. More worrisome would be the criminalization of abortion in many states, even in cases of health complications, financial insecurity, or rape. An overturn could cause 22 states to pass legislation making abortion illegal, causing the number of legal abortions to decrease by over 14% in the U.S. An extreme case is Louisiana, which has already written bills that would be put in place if Roe were overturned. These laws would punish doctors for performing abortions by placing heavy fines and sentencing them to ten years in prison.
Although Justice Amy Barrett has claimed that her “personal views don’t have anything to do with the way I would decide cases,” her past rulings tell a different story. Given the tendency for personal views to shape one’s ideology, the accuracy of her claims will likely be put into question. While it is not unheard of for conservative justices to side with a more liberal cause, America will have to wait to see if that proves true for Justice Barrett.
by NAVYA SAMMETTA