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“OPPOSITION TO THE NOMINATION OF AMY CONEY BARRETT AS ASSOCIATE JUSTICE OF SUPREME COURT” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the Extensions of Remarks section on pages E970-E972 on Oct. 20, 2020.
The State Department is responsibly for international relations with a budget of more than $50 billion. Tenure at the State Dept. is increasingly tenuous and it's seen as an extension of the President's will, ambitions and flaws.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
OPPOSITION TO THE NOMINATION OF AMY CONEY BARRETT AS ASSOCIATE JUSTICE
OF SUPREME COURT
______
HON. SHEILA JACKSON LEE
of texas
in the house of representatives
Tuesday, October 20, 2020
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Madam Speaker, as senior member of the House Committee on the Judiciary, as citizen of the United States, as a mother, and as a African American woman I rise in my strong opposition to the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court of the United States.
I oppose this nomination because Judge Barrett's extreme record on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, along with her ideologically driven writings and speeches, demonstrate that she is incapable of rendering equal justice under law.
Judge Barrett is hostile to Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), and to Supreme Court cases upholding the Affordable Care Act (``ACA'') and is being nominated to be the decisive vote on the Court to reverse these landmark rulings, so that millions of people can be deprived of access to essential health care services and abortion access.
One highly respected legal commentator who has studied her record in depth called Judge Barrett's record on the bench ``fundamentally cruel'' and said that she ``has either written or joined a remarkable number of opinions that harm unpopular and powerless individuals who rely on the judiciary to safeguard their rights.''
The rush to confirm Judge Barrett is a key part of this impeached and dissembling president's corrupt scheme effort to avoid a peaceful transfer of power and remain in office at any cost.
Indeed, the President recently admitted that he wanted a ninth justice in place because he believes the Supreme Court will end up deciding the election winner, and he wants another loyalist on the Court to tip the scale in his favor.
No justice confirmed under these circumstances would have legitimacy in a case bearing on the outcome of the presidential election, so it is troubling that Judge Barrett has not stated publicly that she will recuse herself from participating in any such case.
By nearly a two-to-one margin, Americans believe that the winner of the upcoming presidential election should fill the current Supreme Court vacancy.
In this they are in lockstep agreement with the principle enunciated by Senate Majority Leader McConnell on February 13, 2016, when he refused to even confirmation hearings, much less a floor vote, for President Obama nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to succeed Justice Scalia:
The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.
This principle was echoed by the current Judiciary Chairman Graham who stated in 2016:
I want you to use my words against me. If there's a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said let's let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination.
Before she became the beneficiary of this 180 degree reversal in principle, even Judge Barrett herself enthusiastically agreed with Majority Leader McConnell and Judiciary Committee Chairman Graham that the Senate could and should refuse to advise and consent to a Supreme Court nomination made in an election year, especially where the nomination would alter the ideological balance of the Court.
The legitimacy of the federal judiciary stems from the public's faith that its decision-making is fair and impartial but the rush to confirm Judge Barrett will deeply tarnish the integrity and reputation of the Supreme Court.
As a group of former federal judges counseled in their letter to Senate leaders:
Our nation is on the precipice of a national election and is in the grip of a global pandemic. Our citizenry is sharply polarized--a foreboding sign for the health of any democracy. The judicial confirmation process has increasingly become dangerously politicized. Injecting a Supreme Court confirmation fight into this noxious mix will unalterably change and diminish the public's faith in this vital institution.
Let me now turn to the specific harm to the American people that will result if this nominee were to be confirmed as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.
Judge Barrett is expected to be the deciding vote to strike down the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, or ``ObamaCare,'' depriving millions of people with access to health care amidst the worst public health crisis this nation has witnessed in over a hundred years.
The ACA provides critical health care protections to millions of people, including an estimated 130 million Americans with pre-existing conditions such as the seven million Americans who have tested positive for COVID-19.
If this crucial health care access is stripped away, it would have a particularly devastating impact on communities of color and people with disabilities; the rate of Black people who are uninsured would dramatically increase 20 percent, and an estimated 5.4 million Latinos, 2 million Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders, and 300,000 Native Americans could lose coverage, and Americans with disabilities would be particularly impacted, with the uninsured rate for people with disabilities rising by up to 42 percent.
Invalidation of the ACA would not only remove critical health care protections for people with pre-existing conditions and people with disabilities, it would disproportionately harm people of color and potentially jeopardize access to a COVID-19 vaccine, the Medicaid expansion that has brought health care to tens of millions of people, critical nondiscrimination provisions, coverage for those under 26 who are currently on their parents' health care insurance plan, insurance coverage for substance abuse treatment including opioid addition, and the removal of caps that insurance companies previously placed on expensive medical treatment.
The Supreme Court is set to decide the fate of the ACA and its protections for people with pre-existing conditions this term and will hear oral arguments in California v. Texas. __ U.S. __, No. 19-840
(2020)--the legal challenge to this vital law--on November 10, just one week after Election Day, and that is why the President and his Senate acolytes are rushing forward with this nomination to try to install Judge Barrett on the Court in time to kill the ACA, a feat they have tried but failed to accomplish 70 times through the legislative process.
In Doe v. Purdue University, 928 F.3d 652 (7th Cir. 2019), Judge Barrett wrote an opinion that allowed a male student--who was credibly accused of committing multiple sexual assaults and suspended from the university--to advance a Title IX lawsuit against the university alleging he was discriminated against because he was a man.
Judge Barrett's ruling turned a sex discrimination statute on its head, using a law meant to prevent and address sexual assault to promote impunity for that very same behavior and will discourage universities from disciplining male perpetrators of sexual violence since doing so may result in their being sued for sex discrimination.
Judge Barrett's opinion in this case intimated erroneously and intentionally that the U.S. Department of Education's Obama-era 2011 Title IX guidance calling on schools to take sexual harassment seriously resulted in discrimination against men--even though this guidance prohibited the unfair procedures the male student alleged he experienced.
It is unconscionable that we are even considering replacing Justice Ginsburg's legacy with a judge who is willing to allow sex discrimination laws to be used as a sword for men rather than a shield to protect women.
In the field of criminal justice and procedure, Judge Barrett's judicial record raises serious questions about whether she would be fair to victims of law enforcement misconduct; she has regularly ruled for law enforcement and against defendants in criminal cases and people in prison, often in dissent, reflecting her extreme views.
For example, Judge Barrett dissented in United States v. Uriarte, No. 19-2092, 2020 WL 5525119 (7th Cir. Sept. 15, 2020), where the Seventh Circuit, sitting en banc, applied the reduced mandatory minimum sentencing requirements of the First Step Act, an important, bipartisan criminal justice reform measure passed by Congress and signed into law in 2018.
In a 9-3 opinion, the Seventh Circuit held that at the time of the enactment of the First Step Act, Hector Uriarte, a federal defendant, was convicted but not yet sentenced, and therefore eligible for the First Step Act's reduced sentencing procedure.
Mr. Uriarte was resentenced under the First Step Act to a term of 20 years, and the Trump administration challenged that new sentence, and predictably Judge Barrett authored the dissent, siding with the Trump administration that the First Step Act did not apply to the defendant.
In another case, McCottrell v. White, 933 F.3d 651 (7th Cir. 2019), the majority reversed the district judge's finding that the guards had fired ``reasonable'' warning shots and remanded the case but Judge Barrett dissented, siding with prison guards who fired buckshot from their shotguns, significantly injuring two inmates, and opining that the inmates should be denied the opportunity to prove at trial that excessive force was used against them in violation of the Eighth Amendment.
Judge Barrett's reasoning was so unreasonable that the majority was moved to note that ``the dissent suggests that firing two shotguns loaded with buckshot into the ceiling of a crowded dining hall cannot be deemed to be malicious and sadistic or even characterized as an intentional application of force without a showing that a guard
`intended to hit or harm someone with his application of force.' That standard is met here.''
The scourge of gun violence kills nearly 40,000 Americans every year but Judge Barrett's record indicates she would likely be a pivotal vote on the Court to support the gun lobby and strike down common-sense gun safety laws.
In Kanter v. Barr, 919 F.3d 437 (7th Cir. 2019), a Seventh Circuit panel majority consisting of Reagan held that a law barring felons from possessing a firearm did not violate the Second Amendment but unsurprisingly Judge Barrett dissented, accusing the majority of treating the Second Amendment as a ``second-class right'' and stating that she believed the ban on gun possession should only apply to violent felons.
And outrageously, Judge Barrett also concluded that it was appropriate to deny nonviolent felons the right to vote but not the right to bear arm, writing ``history does show that felons could be disqualified from exercising certain rights--like the rights to vote and serve on juries--because these rights belonged only to virtuous citizens.''
We do not need a Supreme Court Justice whose world view is that the right to own an AR-15 is more precious and valued than the fundamental right to vote.
Upon Judge Barrett's nomination to the Supreme Court, the Giffords Law Center stated:
Judge Barrett holds Second Amendment views that are far more extreme than conservatives like Justice Antonin Scalia. Her willingness to disregard established precedent and strike down gun safety laws is too radical for this country and even past Republican administrations.
Moreover, it is clear that based on her statements and judicial record, Judge Barrett is incapable of serving as a fair and neutral arbiter in reproductive rights cases, including those involving abortion, contraception, and perhaps even fertility care.
In 2006, Judge Barrett signed her name to a two-page advertisement in a South Bend, Indiana newspaper calling for the end of the legal right to abortion--which, under her extremist views, includes some forms of birth control and in vitro fertilization but she failed to disclose this document in her Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire.
In 2012, Judge Barrett signed a letter entitled ``Unacceptable'' that protested the Obama administration's good faith effort to create a compromise in carrying out the ACA's requirement ensuring comprehensive birth control coverage, an accommodation permitted eligible employers and schools to opt out of covering birth control but still ensure that the workers and students had access to seamless coverage of essential care.
As a signatory to this letter, Judge Barrett demonstrated that she is willing to eschew science in favor of her own personal biases and thinks employers can deny their workers birth control coverage.
And unsurprisingly, Judge Barrett's judicial record reflects her deep hostility to reproductive freedom.
In Planned Planned Parenthood of Ind. & Ky., Inc. v. Adams, 937 F.3d 973, 981 (7th Cir. 2019), Judge Barrett voted to rehear a case involving an Indiana abortion restriction that judges already deemed likely unconstitutional.
The Indiana law put minors in dangerous situations by requiring them to notify their parents even if a judge already found the minor to be mature enough to make this decision without involving a parent, which the district court noted that ``the requirement of providing parental notification before obtaining an abortion carries with it the threat of domestic abuse, intimidation, coercion, and actual physical obstruction.''
The Indiana law was in clear violation of longstanding Supreme Court precedent, and the three-judge Seventh Circuit panel that blocked the Indiana law found that it would likely impose ``an undue burden for the unemancipated minors who seek to obtain an abortion without parental involvement via the judicial bypass.''
Yet Judge Barrett joined a dissent that questioned whether the plaintiffs could even challenge the law before it went into effect, arguing erroneously that the status of pre-enforcement challenges in the abortion context'' was ``unsettled'' and deserved full court review.
In another case, Planned Parenthood of Indiana & Kentucky v. Commissioner of Indiana State Department of Health, 917 F.3d 532 (7th Cir. 2018), Judge Barrett voted in dissent to rehear a case already deemed unconstitutional and joined a dissent that argued that a state should be able to restrict abortion when the reason for that choice is the fetus's gender, race, sex, or fetal diagnosis (often known as
``reason bans''), even though that provision was not being considered in the decision before the court.
President Trump has bragged repeatedly that he would only nominate justices who would ``automatically'' overturn Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113
(1973); it is clear that Judge Barrett has passed his litmus test.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a fearless champion of justice and the conscience of the Court so it is doubly outrageous that the Senate majority is attempting to rush through Judge Barrett's nomination rather than addressing the many urgent challenges that are gripping our nation at this moment--from the devastating impact of the worst public health crisis in a hundred years, to the racial reckoning over police brutality and violence, to the need to safeguard our democracy by helping fund the election and U.S. Postal Service.
At a time when more than 215,000 Americans have lost their lives to COVID-19 and the need for health care access is more acute than ever, this President and this temporary Republican Senate majority has chosen to subordinate passing legislation to aid an ailing nation to stealing and filling a Supreme Court vacancy with a nominee hostile to health care access, hostile to women's rights, and indifferent to the plea for equal justice being voiced across the country by Americans of every race, creed, color, religion, and region.
Madam Speaker, I end where I began: Judge Barrett's extreme record on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, along with her ideologically driven writings and speeches, demonstrate that she is incapable of rendering equal justice under law.
I urge this nomination be defeated and that this vacancy not be filled until after the election of the next President of the United States.
____________________
