Amy Coney Barrett draws backlash from conservative critics who want her to be a Trump partisan
The Supreme Court handed Donald Trump one major defeat and two lesser wins as it closed its session yesterday with a bang.
But the court, with three Trump appointees, also ruled against the president in some cases.
Trump, to no one's surprise, praised the favorable ones and ripped the adverse decisions.
So the atmosphere was ripe for all kinds of media spin.
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Perhaps the ruling that generated the most anger was the court upholding a $5 million Trump payment to writer E. Jean Carroll for her claims of defamation and sexual assault in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in 1996.
Trump’s reaction: "Surprisingly, the Supreme Court declined to ‘review’ a Fake Case brought against me by a woman I never met (Decades old celebrity photo line, standing with her husband, does not count!) I will continue the fight against this weaponization and Lawfare Case against me, including the ridiculous claim of Defamation, with all of my power and strength."
But he’s out of appeal. The Supreme Court just turned him down. It’s over.
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You know what's fascinating?
Every judicial nominee testifies before the Senate that they'll only call balls and strikes, as John Roberts once put it, and the lawmakers nod sagely.
But as soon as the newly minted justice votes against Trump and his team, they denounce him or her for being off the reservation — in other words, failing a political loyalty test that they had dismissed during the confirmation hearings.
The target du jour is Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee who wrote the opinion in a 5-4 case in which she and Roberts joined the liberals.
Days after Election Day.
The right went haywire. Conservative author Hans Mahncke said on X that "the worst part is that she’ll be there pushing leftist policies for the next 40 years."
Barrett dissented Monday on whether Trump could fire a Fed governor, saying it was wrong to narrowly base their decision on an emergency request by Trump.
In that job, a lifetime appointment, you need thick skin.
In the trio of major cases decided yesterday, the most important by far was the court shooting down Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship, in which anyone born on U.S. soil is automatically considered an American citizen.
Barrett, along with the chief justice, joined the court’s liberals in saying that this is a violation of the 14th Amendment, which deals with equal rights for citizens and was ratified in 1868 to protect the rights of newly freed slaves.
Barrett has deeply rooted beliefs based on her career as a Notre Dame law professor, and deep religious beliefs as a Catholic, who is also associated with a charismatic Christian community called People of Praise.
Some Trump allies, says the New York Times, have called the justice, with seven children and two Black children adopted from Haiti, a DEI hire.
Barrett wrote this week’s majority opinion, in that 5-4 case, in favor of a Mississippi law allowing mail-in ballots to be counted after Election Day.
The president, who despises mail-in ballots, called it a "tremendous loss."
Of course, being a swing vote, as Sandra Day O’Connor was, enhances her influence during deliberations behind the white marble portico of Corinthian columns.
In the other two major cases decided yesterday, the high court allowed political parties to coordinate directly with candidates, and upheld the right of states to bar biological males from competing in women’s sports.
"Once," Barrett wrote in her memoir, "when other justices joined a particularly tricky opinion of mine, my chambers celebrated with an impromptu bottle of champagne."
She voted, for instance, to reinstate the death penalty for the Boston Marathon bomber, even though she is personally opposed to capital punishment.
In the end, the conservative backlash against Amy Coney Barrett says more about her critics, and sometimes directed at other justices, than it does about her.
They feel betrayed because they want her to politically support the man who nominated her.
But that’s not judicial independence.