Collins: Won’t support judge hostile to Roe
Gave views on justice seat to Trump, GOP senator says
WASHINGTON — Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, a key swing vote on President Donald Trump’s next Supreme Court pick, said Sunday that she would not vote for any judge who wanted to end access to abortion in the United States by overturning Roe v. Wade.
“I would not support a nominee who demonstrated hostility to Roe v. Wade because that would mean to me that their judicial philosophy did not include a respect for established decisions, established law,” Collins said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, adding that Roe v. Wade established abortion as a “constitutional right.”
In another appearance, on ABC News’ This Week, Collins said that any judge who wants to overturn Roe has an “activist agenda” that she thinks goes against the fundamental tenets of U.S. law and the Constitution. Trump has met with Collins to discuss potential candidates for the Supreme Court, and she said she let him know that she would not support some of the people on the list of 25 judges he’s considering for the critical role on the nation’s highest court. She said she urged him to expand his list.
On the 2016 campaign trail, Trump indicated he would take into account whether a judge would overturn Roe v. Wade when
he considered them for a Supreme Court position, and his evangelical base is calling for him to honor his promise. But Trump has changed his rhetoric in the past week after Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement.
Without Kennedy, the high court will have four justices picked by Democratic presidents and four picked by Republicans, giving Trump the chance to shift the ideological balance toward conservatives. Both Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s first pick to the high court, have indicated more broadly that they respect legal precedent.
Collins said Trump assured her that he would not ask nominees whether they would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade.
“The president told me in our meeting that he would not ask that question,” she said on CNN. In her ABC News appearance, Collins added that she feels it would be “inappropriate” for Trump to ask that question of a judicial nominee.
“A discussion of precedent, however, is very important,” Collins added. “What I want to see is a nominee who, regardless of his or her personal views on the very difficult and contentious life issue, is going to respect precedent. I’ve had a number of judges who say to me that good judges are always unhappy with some of their decisions, but they make the right call regardless of their personal views. And that’s what I want to see in this nominee.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a member of the Judiciary Committee, also said he didn’t think Trump would be overly focused on the Roe ruling.
“You don’t overturn precedent unless there’s a good reason. I would tell my prolife friends: You can be pro-life and conservative, but you can also believe in ‘stare decisis,’” Graham said, citing the legal term involving legal precedent that means “to stand by things decided.”
SENATOR CRITICIZED
Liberals leading the charge against Trump’s potential picks quickly dismissed Collins’ remarks, suggesting that the senator was either being hoodwinked or was obfuscating her position.
At issue was Collins’ stated belief that neither Roberts nor Gorsuch, whom she voted to confirm to the court last year, would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. Collins said Gorsuch, who was an author of a book on judicial precedents, “understands how important a principle that is in our judicial system.”
Pressed on CNN to account for the court’s recent decisions overturning precedent in other cases, Collins said she viewed the abortion-rights case as long-settled law not subject to the same revision.
“There’s a big difference between overturning some precedents, such as Plessy vs. Ferguson, which was overturned in the school desegregation case of Brown vs. the Board of Education, vs. overturning a ruling that has been settled law for 45 years,” Collins said, referring to the 1896 ruling that upheld the constitutionality of “separate but equal.”
Brian Fallon — a longtime Democratic operative whose organization, Demand Justice, is helping organize opposition to potential nominees — was critical of Collins’ reasoning on Twitter on Sunday morning.
“This proves how flimsy Collins’ pro-Roe position is,” Fallon wrote. “She is perfectly happy to let herself be suckered based on phony assurances about ‘precedent.’”
Other critics pointed to decisions as recently as last week — when the justices overturned a 4-decade-old precedent on union fees in the public sector with its ruling in Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees — in which the court has reversed itself.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., said Collins should be highly skeptical of assurances about precedent, particularly in the confirmation process, when nominees frequently decline to speculate on potential rulings.
“Justice Gorsuch told her that he would respect precedent, and yet he has voted against precedent just this [past] week with the Janus case,” Duckworth said on State of the Union. “If anything, this president, this administration is all about overturning precedents.”
Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said on NBC’s Meet the Press that senators from both parties “know that this vote could be one of the key votes of their entire career.”
“If they vote for somebody who’s going to change precedent, it could be a career-ending move,” Cantwell said.
PICKS ALREADY VETTED
Trump spent the weekend at his New Jersey golf club conferring with his advisers, including White House counsel Don McGahn, as he considers his options to fill the vacancy. He said at a rally in North Dakota last week that he wants to pick someone who will “be there for 40, 45 years.”
Trump said in an interview on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo that Kennedy “ended up being a little more neutral than a lot of people would have preferred.” Kennedy cast several decisive votes in support of gay rights and abortion.
The president said he was “going to pick somebody who’s outstanding,” and praised Gorsuch, his first Supreme Court appointee.
“Honestly, if the Democrats would have won the election, first of all, you would have had a lot different — if you look at the last four decisions in the Supreme Court at 5-4, they would have all been reversed,” he said. “As president — I mean obviously outside of war and peace — the biggest decision you can make is the selection of a Supreme Court justice.”
Leonard Leo, a lawyer advising the president on his Supreme Court pick, also played down the possibility of overturning Roe, saying the matter was largely settled.
“The fact of the matter is, Roe v. Wade is a major precedent,” Leo said on Fox News Sunday. “Part of interpreting the Constitution is taking into account major precedents, and that’s going to happen.”
But many on the left and the right believe that Trump’s short list of candidates is made up of judges who would be open to scaling back abortion rights because they have been vetted by Leo and conservatives already, so the president doesn’t need to ask the question openly.
“Trump ran on a platform of anti-choice judges and the promise of overturning Roe v. Wade, so it’s hard to imagine how someone would be on that list who he didn’t believe was anti-choice,” said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond who focuses on federal judicial selection.
Supreme Court nominees must be confirmed by a majority in the Senate. Republicans have 51 votes, but Sen. John McCain’s health issues may prevent him from voting, meaning Trump would need every other GOP senator’s vote unless a Democrat crossed party lines.
Collins and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, are widely considered the critical swing voters, and Collins has been one of the most bipartisan senators in recent years. Both women voted against the health care overhaul bill championed by Trump last summer, and they have tended to support abortion rights.
Information for this article was contributed by Heather Long and Michael Scherer of The Washington Post; by Hope Yen and Ken Thomas of The Associated Press; and by Nicholas Fandos and Emily Cochrane of The New York Times.