We’re convinced Judge Brett Kavanaugh is a nice guy.
We’re equally convinced he’s anything but an open-minded jurist, dutiful to precedent set by court rulings in the past.
Like his recently appointed predecessor, Justice Neil Gorsuch, Kavanaugh has been singled out to join the U.S. Supreme Court for the sole purpose of backing the agenda of President Donald Trump’s extreme right regime.
There’s no doubt that Kavanaugh is qualified to sit on the court, only because there are no qualifications.
But Kavanaugh’s appointment would undermine critical work to protect Americans from environmental disaster, as well as important rights won by minorities, women and gays over generations of American legal evolution.
Under the guise of being apolitical, Trump, the new Republicans and the nominee seek to use the Supreme Court against the clear will of the people in an effort to legislate from the bench when they can’t do it in Congress.
It’s not that we’ve bought into last week’s Democratic Senate histrionics over whether there’s a smoking gun among hundreds of thousands of documents that were and weren’t released for Kavanaugh’s Senate confirmation hearings. The mountain of emails and memos were from years that he worked at the Bush White House.
The obvious think-tank-like musings of a White House lawyer who appeared to have too much time on his hands are hardly compelling evidence of anything.
There’s no need, however, to look for evidence among Kavanaugh’s White House paper trail that he’s ill-suited for the Supreme Court. Plenty of dubious decisions and comment exist in his very public appellate court decisions.
Like Gorsuch, the damning details aren’t just in his affirmations for corporate rights against those of individuals, or rulings in favor of the government intervening in the control of a woman over her own body. The smoking gun to vote this nomination down exists in the peculiar and unnerving comments Kavanaugh left in his dissents and decisions.
There are hundreds of them. His many years of ruling for the federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit paint a clear picture of a judge who is predisposed to bolster the rights of gun owners and corporations. They also make it clear, that despite his disingenuous urgings under oath last week, he would work to diminish or possibly even end women’s reproductive rights.
Not even a year ago, the appeals court he sat on ruled against the Trump Administration, which tried to prevent a pregnant, 17-year-old illegal immigrant, imprisoned in a Texas ICE detention facility, from obtaining an abortion. The Trump Administration wanted to delay her medical care by moving first her to a “sponsor” where she could be “counseled” about abortion.
The appeals court ruled against Trump, but Kavanaugh dissented. He wrote that a woman’s right to abortion still allows the government to regulate it as long as the imposition “does not impose an undue burden.”
He is no different than the disingenuous, cruel and inept lawmakers from Southern states unconcerned with decency and respect for women’s free will and reproductive rights. These are tenuous rights the Supreme Court has narrowly upheld — until now. Kavanaugh sees delaying tactics and forcing a woman into indoctrination are not an undue burden.
That concern for righteous government intervention ends, however, when it comes to the rights of gun-owners.
In a case against the the District of Columbia for banning semi-automatic rifles and requiring the registration of all hand-guns, Kavanaugh dissented from the court in upholding the city’s right to legislate.
In his dissent opinion, he said the rapid-fire rifles shouldn’t be banned because they haven’t been banned before and have a lawful purpose — like hunting and self-defense. He also said gun registration was new and also should be prohibited, inferring it would be unduly burdensome on the rights of a gun owner.
In ruling after ruling, Kavanaugh has gone out of his way to show he gives deference to the rights of corporations over those of individuals. He endows rights to people for far-right causes. He overrules the rights of government when they diminish the rights of people to things like voting, abortion and healthcare.
Like Gorsuch, Kavanaugh ruled in favor of a corporation limiting healthcare to its employees if corporate owners found healthcare services offered by insurers were morally objectionable. Those objectionable services would include doctor-provided birth control and medications. The offensive services could easily include medical human blood products and procedures for those business owners who say their religion opposes them.
Kavanaugh and Gorsuch overlook that freedom of religion is meaningful only when citizens are free from the religion imposed by a business owner or the government.
Kavanaugh has proven himself a dutiful soldier to the agenda of Trump and the far-right extremists in Congress who continue to prop him him up. The danger with his confirmation is a president who gains power over the people’s Congress. At risk are the rights of gays and women over the rights of backward state legislatures, and the rights of poor, minority voters to be heard by those who seek to suppress them.
We ask that Colorado’s two senators oppose Kavanaugh’s confirmation and insist Trump nominate a candidate willing to ensure rulings based on the merits of each case rather than the willingness to advance the agenda of right-wing extremists.