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Amy Coney Barrett has been confirmed before the United States Supreme Court by a deeply divided Senate with Republicans dominating Democrats to install President Donald Trump’s candidate.
Just days before the election, confirmation in Washington DC on Monday night (local time) secures a conservative majority in court for years to come.
Greg Nash / AP
Just days before the election, Barrett’s confirmation on the Supreme Court ensures a conservative majority in court for years to come.
Trump’s decision to fill the vacancy of the late liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg potentially opens a new era of rulings on abortion, the Affordable Care Act and even his own choice. Democrats couldn’t stop the outcome, Trump’s third judge on the court, as Republicans compete to reshape the judiciary.
Barrett is 48 years old and his lifetime appointment as judge number 115 will solidify the court’s lean to the right.
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Monday’s 52-48 vote was the closest confirmation by a superior court to a presidential election and the first in modern times without the support of the minority party. The acute Covid-19 crisis has taken over the proceedings. Vice President Mike Pence’s office said Monday that he will not preside over the Senate session unless his runoff vote is needed after Democrats asked him to stay away when his aides tested positive for Covid-19. Your vote was not necessary.
With Barrett’s confirmation secured, Trump was expected to celebrate with a primetime swearing-in event at the White House. Judge Clarence Thomas was supposed to administer the constitutional oath, a senior White House official said.
Jacquelyn Martin / AP
People pray at the door of the Supreme Court in support of Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett on October 26, 2020.
“This is something to be really proud of and something to feel good about,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said during a rare weekend session the Sunday before the vote. He scoffed at “apocalyptic” warnings from critics that the judiciary was getting bogged down in partisan politics, declaring that “they won’t be able to do much about it for long.”
Pence’s presence presiding over the vote would have been expected, showing Republican priority. But Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and his leadership team said not only would it violate the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s virus guidelines, it “would also be a violation of common decency and courtesy.”
Some Republican senators tested positive for the coronavirus after an event at the Rose Garden with Trump to announce Barrett’s nomination last month, but they have since said their doctors have cleared them of quarantine. Pence was not infected and his office said the vice president tested negative for the virus on Monday.
Democrats argued for weeks that the vote was being unduly rushed, insisting during an all-night Sunday session that it should be the winner of the Nov. 3 election who names the candidate. However, Barrett, a judge for the Indiana federal appeals court, is expected to quickly sit down and begin hearing cases.
Speaking around midnight Sunday, Senator Elizabeth Warren called the vote “illegitimate” and “the last gasp of a desperate party.”
Several issues are awaiting a decision just a week before Election Day, and Barrett could be a swing vote in Republican appeals of orders extending deadlines for absentee ballots in North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
The judges are also weighing Trump’s emergency request for the court to prevent the Manhattan district attorney from obtaining his tax returns. And on November 10, the court is expected to hear the Trump-backed challenge to the Obama-era Affordable Care Act.
Trump has said he wanted to quickly install a ninth judge to resolve election disputes and is hopeful the justices will end the “Obamacare” healthcare law.
Jacquelyn Martin / AP
People are protesting for and against Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court on October 26, 2020 in front of the Supreme Court on Capitol Hill in Washington.
During several days of public testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Barrett was careful not to reveal how he would fail in such cases.
He introduced himself as a neutral referee and suggested, “It’s not Amy’s law.” But his writings against abortion and a ruling on “Obamacare” show a deeply conservative thinker.
Senator Lindsey Graham, Chair of the Judiciary Committee, praised the mother of seven as a role model: “a conservative woman who embraces her faith.” Republicans focused on their Catholic religion, dismissing previous Democratic questions about their beliefs. Graham said Barrett is “blatantly pro-life, but he’s not going to apply ‘Amy’s law’ to all of us.”
Early in Trump’s presidency, McConnell engineered a Senate rule change to allow confirmation by a majority of 100 senators, rather than the 60-vote threshold traditionally needed to advance superior court nominees on the objections. That was an escalation of a rule change that Democrats launched to promote other judicial and administrative candidates under President Barack Obama.
Republicans are taking a political step by pushing for confirmation days for the November 3 election with the presidency and a majority of the Senate at stake.
Only one Republican, Sen. Susan Collins, who is in a fierce fight for reelection in Maine, voted against the nominee, not by any direct evaluation of Barrett. Rather, Collins said, “I don’t think it’s fair or consistent to have a Senate confirmation vote before the election.”
Trump and his Republican allies hoped for a campaign boost, much as Trump generated excitement among conservatives and evangelical Christians in 2016 over a court vacancy. That year, McConnell refused to allow the Senate to consider then-President Barack Obama’s choice to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia, arguing that the new president should decide.
Susan Walsh / AP
Amy Coney Barrett answers questions from Senator Mazie Hirono during the second day of her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington.
Most of the other Republicans facing difficult careers accepted the candidate to bolster their position with the Conservatives. Senator Thom Tillis said in a speech Monday that Barrett “will go down in history as one of the great justices.”
But it is not clear that the extraordinary effort to install new justice over such opposition in a hot election year will pay political rewards to the Republican Party.
Demonstrations for and against the nominee have been quieter on Capitol Hill under coronavirus restrictions.
Democrats are unified against Barrett. While two Democratic senators voted to confirm Barrett in 2017 after Trump nominated the Notre Dame Law School professor to the court of appeal, neither voted to confirm her in superior court.
In a display of the party’s priorities, California Senator Kamala Harris, nominated for the vice presidency, returned to Washington from the election campaign to join her colleagues with a negative vote.
No other Supreme Court magistrate has been confirmed in a recorded vote without the support of the minority party in at least 150 years, according to information provided by the Senate Historical Office.
Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick, Andrew Taylor, Mark Sherman, Zeke Miller, and Aamer Madhani in Washington and Kathleen Ronayne in California contributed to this report.
