Donald Trump has chosen Amy Coney Barrett to fill Ruth Bader Ginsburg's seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.
The NYT reports: “Mr. Trump plans to announce on Saturday that she is his choice, according to people close to the process who asked not to be identified disclosing the decision in advance. The president met with Judge Barrett at the White House this week and came away impressed with a jurist that leading conservatives told him would be a female Antonin Scalia, referring to the justice who died in 2016 and for whom Judge Barrett clerked.”
Writes Refinery29: “Barrett, who started her career as a clerk for Justice Antonin Scalia and has been described as his ‘ideological heir' due to her staunchly conservative stance on the subjects of abortion and healthcare, has one affiliation that is perhaps most concerning. According to author Margaret Atwood, her dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale was inspired (read: haunted) by multiple religious groups, which many believe includes People of Praise, which Barrett is reportedly affiliated with. Barrett identifies as Catholic, but more specifically, she is affiliated with an ecumenical Christian group, the People of Praise. The group believes in a number of Pentecostal staples such as prophecy, speaking in tongues, and divine healings.”
As far as Barrett's views on LGBTQ rights, HRC reports: “Coney Barrett defended the Supreme Court's dissenters on the landmark marriage equality case of Obergefell v. Hodges, questioning the role of the court in deciding the case.”
Wrote Barrett: “[Chief Justice Roberts, in his dissent,] said, those who want same-sex marriage, you have every right to lobby in state legislatures to make that happen, but the dissent's view was that it wasn't for the court to decide…So I think Obergefell, and what we're talking about for the future of the court, it's really a who decides question.”
Barrett also believes Title IX protections do not extend to transgender Americans.
Wrote Barrett: “When Title IX was enacted, it's pretty clear that no one, including the Congress that enacted that statute, would have dreamed of that result, at that time. Maybe things have changed so that we should change Title IX, maybe those arguing in favor of this kind of transgender bathroom access are right. That's a public policy debate to have. But it does seem to strain the text of the statute to say that Title IX demands it.”
More here.
