When Amy Coney Barrett was appointed to the Supreme Court nearly four years back, some republicans and constitutional scholars were enthralled.
The Catholic family of seven sounded like the ideal person to take the place of communist Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg after clerking for past Justice Antonin Scalia. Speaking of her former employer, Barrett after said,” His criminal philosophy is mine to: A judge may apply the law as written. Judges may be resolute in rejecting any possible policy positions because they are not politicians.
These facts gave the impression that Barrett’s law would be in line with that of originalist Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, despite her relatively strong track record while serving on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.
In the decades since joining the world’s highest court, nevertheless, Barrett has produced a criminal record more equivalent to that of a reasonable than a real originalist. In a number of well-known cases, she has abandoned originalism and supported the prosecutor’s Democratic appointees in passing laws from the chair, so much so that she is now viewed as a swing vote on controversial issues before the court.
In Barrett, liberals hoped they were getting another Thomas or Alito. Rather, they were given a female type of Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh or Chief Justice John Roberts.
New Circumstances
Finding cases documenting Barrett’s disappointing SCOTUS record does n’t require much digging. Her abandonment of originalist law was quite evident during the great court’s 2023-2024 period.
In a situation involving many doctors and the attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri against the Biden presidency for its immoral collaboration with Big Tech companies to reduce statement that the federal government viewed negatively, Barrett authored the majority opinion in Murthy v. Missouri. In an arbitrarily ruling that claimants lacked standing to take the lawsuit and “have not demonstrated that they are likely to experience a risk of future censorship visible to the Biden management,” Barrett sided with Roberts, Kavanaugh, and the prosecutor’s Democrat appointees.
The decision effectively allows the federal government’s Big Tech censorship scheme to continue indefinitely.
]READ: Amy Coney Barrett Acts Clueless About Hunter Biden’s Laptop ]
In a surprising twist, Barrett authored the minority opinion in Fischer v. United States, a case focused on the Biden Justice Department’s broad interpretation of a federal statute weaponized by the agency to indict Donald Trump and hundreds of Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol demonstrators.
In a black robe, Barrett portrayed the role of a legislator in the company of Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. She ridiculedly claimed that the DOJ’s “obstruction” provision in the statute was distorted by the statute’s original meaning and could be used to prosecute the criminal defendants.
The law’s obstruction language “is a very broad provision, and admittedly, events like January 6th were not its target. ( Who could blame Congress for that failure of imagination? )”, Barrett wrote. ” But statutes often go further than the problem that inspired them, and under the rules of statutory interpretation, we stick to the text anyway”.
According to investigative reporter Julie Kelly, Barrett’s dissention echoes” the words of DC judges who claimed the 4-hour disturbance at the Capitol was so unthinkable that Congress never imagined that such an event would occur, so 1512c2 applies.”
Barrett also sided with Roberts, Kavanaugh, and the court’s three leftists in Moyle v. United States, in which the majority refused to limit the federal bureaucracy’s abortion activism.
It Gets Worse
Barrett’s penchant for toeing the moderate line is hardly exclusive to the Supreme Court’s recent session.
The former Scalia clerk joined Roberts and the Democrat justices in lifting a lower court’s injunction in January that forbade federal agents from cutting razor wire that was installed along Texas ‘ U.S. border. She also sided with these same justices last year in allowing the Biden administration’s so-called “ghost gun” restrictions to go into effect. According to Fox News, Second Amendment advocacy groups have described the rules as “unconstitutional and abusive.”
One of Barrett’s most egregious decisions, however, came in July 2021, when she refused to hear the case of Barronelle Stutzman, a florist from Washington state who was sued for declining to provide floral services for a gay couple’s “wedding” based on religious grounds. While Thomas, Alito, and Neil Gorsuch agreed to hear the case, Barrett, along with Roberts, Kavanaugh, and the court’s Democrats, refused. Before a case can be considered by the entire court, Supreme Court rules require at least four justices to consent to hear it.
SCOTUS’s inaction resulted in Stutzman ultimately paying a$ 5, 000 settlement to the gay couple, which they reportedly donated to PFLAG, a radical LGBT advocacy group.
Room for Improvement
This is n’t all to say Barrett’s tenure has n’t produced its good moments. Her role in overturning Roe v. Wade and Chevron deference, upholding certain religious liberty and Second Amendment protections, and nuking racist affirmative action policies, Democrat lawfare, and Joe Biden’s illegal student loan bailout has been invaluable.
These decisions demonstrate Barrett’s ability to faithfully apply the law as it is written and render judgments that conform to originalist doctrine. But consistency in carrying out that philosophy is where she falls short.
There is still room for a course correction, even though it seems premature that Barrett would join Thomas and Alito in forming a trustworthy originalist coalition. Barrett, the youngest justice on the Supreme Court, has a long career ahead of her, at the age of 52. It’s not too late for her to turn away from the squishy moderatism that has characterized her so far and achieve the justice that Americans who value the Constitution hoped for.
Shawn Fleetwood is a graduate of the University of Mary Washington and a staff writer for The Federalist. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClear Health, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
