Barrett, revealing little, suggests she might preserve healthcare law
Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett testifies during a confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday in Washington. She suggested she had no ‘animus to or agenda for’ the Affordable Care Act.
Amy Coney Barrett, President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, pushed back on Wednesday against Democrats’ charge that she would be a certain vote to overturn the Affordable Care Act, suggesting that she had no “animus to or agenda for” the law.
On the final day of questioning at her confirmation hearings, Barrett stopped short of directly indicating how she might rule when the court hears a challenge to the health care law next month. But she strongly suggested that she might be inclined to leave portions of it intact, despite Trump’s outspoken desire for the court to strike it down.
The pushback stood out as a rare window of potential insight into Barrett’s thinking in hearings that otherwise consisted mostly of evasions and nonresponses to Democrats seeking to portray her as a conservative extremist bent on catering to Trump’s legal whims.
It came as Republicans and Democrats began making what amounted to their closing arguments in the highly politicized fight over elevating Barrett, 48. Members of both parties conceded that her confirmation, and the establishment of a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, was now all but inevitable.
After days of downplaying Barrett’s lifestyle and legal views as irrelevant, Republicans openly lauded the ascension of the type of unquestioningly conservative figure they have dreamed of since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016. It promised a lasting legacy for Trump and held out the potential for a badly needed boost to their politiJudge cal campaigns and chances of holding the Senate majority.
“This is the first time in American history that we’ve nominated a woman who is unashamedly pro-life and embraces her faith without apology, and she is going to the court,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the committee’s chairman. “A seat at the table is waiting on you, and it will be a great signal to all young women who want to share your view of the world that there is a seat at the table for them.”
Democrats took a far more sinister view. They rejected Barrett’s comments on the Affordable Care Act as misleading, but indicated they were beside the point anyway. By replacing Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the leader of the court’s liberal wing, with a textualist and originalist in the vein of Scalia, the court’s direction would be clear and swift on health care access, abortion rights, gay marriage and questions of corporate power.
“My core concern here, your honor, is that your confirmation may launch a new chapter of conservative judicial activism unlike anything we’ve seen in decades,” said Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del. “We’ve mostly been talking about the Affordable Care Act and privacy-related cases, but if that’s true, it could touch virtually every aspect of modern American life.”
“I pray that I’m wrong,” he continued. “I hope that I am.”
Republicans planned to move quickly on Thursday to begin advancing her nomination, a process expected to culminate as soon as Oct. 26 with a vote to confirm her just about a week before Election Day — and two weeks before the court hears the case on Affordable Care Act.
Democrats struggled again on Wednesday to move Barrett, an appeals court judge and Notre
Dame law professor, off carefully stated generalities. She batted away questions about Trump’s ability to pardon himself, about voting by mail and about her views of politically charged Supreme Court precedent in cases involving abortion, gay marriage and voting rights.
She would not share her views about climate change, calling it “a very contentious matter of public debate” a position starkly at odds with the established scientific consensus — nor say whether she thought it was wrong to separate immigrant children from their parents at the border to deter unauthorized entries.
Each time, she cited a policy adopted by previous Supreme Court nominees not to comment in their confirmation hearings in any way that would tip their hand on future cases that might come before the court.
Democrats were visibly frustrated.
In friendly exchanges with Republicans that appeared intended to allay voters’ fears about the fate of the Affordable Care Act, she was a bit more forthcoming.
The case coming before the court next month has to do with a single provision of the sprawling law that requires individuals to purchase insurance. Republicans who brought the suit have argued that because Congress zeroed out a penalty for violating the mandate, it is now unconstitutional and so is the whole law.
But Barrett implied on Wednesday that she might be inclined to preserve the broader law because of the legal doctrine of severability, which generally allows the court to strike down a single provision of a law and retain the balance of it.
“The presumption,” Barrett said, “is always in favor of severability.”