John Roberts calls Schumer's remarks on justices ‘dangerous’ in rare rebuke
The chief justice of the US supreme court has taken the unusual step of criticizing as “inappropriate” and “dangerous” comments that the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, made about conservative justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.
John Roberts was responding to Schumer’s remarks at a rally outside the court while a high-profile abortion case was being argued inside, which pro-choice activists say could threaten abortion rights in the US.
“You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You will not know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions,” Schumer said, naming the two appointees of Donald Trump, according to video of the rally available online.
In a statement, Schumer spokesman Justin Goodman criticized Roberts, saying that to follow the right wing’s deliberate misinterpretation of what Schumer said shows the chief justice “does not just call balls and strikes”.
Goodman said Schumer’s comments were a reference to the political price Senate Republicans will pay for putting these justices on the court, and a warning that the justices will unleash a major grassroots movement on the issue of reproductive rights against the decision.
He noted that the chief justice remained quiet in recent weeks when the president questioned the impartiality of Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor.
As the US justice system faced a crisis of credibility last month because of the Trump administration’s handling of federal cases, Trump took the unusual step of attacking the two liberalleaning supreme court justices on Twitter and in remarks to the press.
In a dissent last week, Sotomayor criticized the Trump administration’s frequent appeals to the supreme court to intervene in lower-court decisions, and the court’s willingness to side with such requests.
On Twitter, responding to a segment on Fox News’s The Ingraham
Angle, Trump unleashed a tirade against Sotomayor and Ginsburg, who has criticized the president in the past.
“This is a terrible thing to say,” Trump tweeted. “Trying to ‘shame’ some into voting her way? She never criticized Justice Ginsberg when she called me a ‘faker’. Both should recuse themselves on all Trump, or Trump related, matters!”
But Roberts, who in 2018 rebuked Trump for his criticism of an “Obama judge”, jumped to his colleagues’ defense on Wednesday after Schumer’s remarks.
“Justices know that criticism comes with the territory, but threatening statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous,” Roberts said in a statement.
The justices are currently weighing a Louisiana law requiring doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. A federal judge found that just one of Louisiana’s three abortion clinics would remain open if the law is allowed to take effect.
Roberts is expected to be the deciding vote.