Trump SCOTUS nominee Amy Coney Barrett is set to appear at hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee beginning at 9 am ET.
CNBC reports: “Barrett is expected to speak at the end of the day Monday. In prepared remarks, the judge focuses on her family, introducing the Judiciary Committee to her seven children and her husband, Jesse. She also praises Ginsburg and her judicial mentor, Justice Antonin Scalia, with whom she has said she shares a philosophy. Ginsburg and Scalia were close friends but ideological opposites. Barrett also expressed her view that courts should avoid making policy decisions and value judgments, which she said in her prepared remarks that they ‘must be made by the political branches elected by and accountable to the people.’ … ‘The public should not expect courts to do so, and courts should not try,’ she said.”
ABC News reports: “Six in 10 registered voters say the U.S. Supreme Court should uphold Roe v. Wade as the basis of abortion law in the United States, and a majority in an ABC News/Washington Post poll — albeit now a narrow one — says the Senate should delay filling the court’s current vacancy.”
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.”
