Judge Coney Barrett Will Satisfy and Entrench the Retrograde Trump Coalition

“Supreme Court Not a Reliable Source of Justice”

September 23, 2020, New York – In response to Donald Trump’s nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to fill the seat of late U.S. Supreme Court JusticeRuth Bader Ginsburg, and in anticipation of the Senate’s likely rush to confirm, the Center for Constitutional Rights issued the following statement:

Even before the Supreme Court nominee was announced, current political dynamics and the coalescence of white supremacist, anti-democratic ideology revealedexactly what Judge Coney Barrett would portend: votes to reverse Roe v. Wade; expand religious exemptions from basic anti-discrimination laws and other maneuvers to target the LGBTQIA+ community; rubber stamp Republican-led voter suppression of Black, Brown, and poor communities and gerrymandering efforts to install one-party rule; develop constitutional doctrines that invalidate basic regulations protecting public health, consumer safety, and environmental devastation; and, more broadly, dismantle social welfare protections rooted as far back as theNew Deal. 

The nomination of Judge Coney Barrett will certainly satisfy the core of the retrograde Trump coalition: Evangelicals who are heartily behind Trump because he is giving them control over the courts and otherwise advancing their vision of a Christian, white supremicist state, as well as mega-capitalists who benefit from the endless spirals of deregulation this Administration has brought. Trump’s primary personal motivation in her nomination is to ensure a vote that will support any and all election challenges to benefit Trump--entrenching the harmful legacy of Bush v. Gore.  

The Supreme Court has rarely been a reliable source of justice for marginalized groups, poor communities, women, Black people, or other people of color. The more recent authoritarian turn should make clear the religious, white-supremacist, xenophobic, hypercapitalist core of the American Right--and that clarity should mobilize us for the hard fights ahead. We cannot count on the courts or individual justices to save us. The Center for Constitutional Rights will continue to do all we can to support ongoing mass mobilizations of grassroots organizers, protect those targeted for state violence and repression, and articulate an affirmative vision of freedom and liberation.