Barrett confirmed by Senate for Supreme Court, takes oaths
WASHINGTON (AP) — Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed to the Supreme Court
late Monday by a deeply divided Senate, with Republicans overpowering
Democrats to install President Donald Trump’s nominee days before the
election and secure a likely conservative court majority for years to
come.
Trump’s choice 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 election. Democrats were unable to stop the
outcome, Trump’s third justice on the court, as Republicans race to
reshape the judiciary.
Barrett, 48, will be able to start work
Tuesday, her lifetime appointment as the 115th justice solidifying the
court’s rightward tilt.
“This is a momentous day for America,”
Trump said at a primetime swearing-in event on the South Lawn at the
White House, before Justice Clarence Thomas administered the
Constitutional Oath to Barrett before a crowd of about 200.
Barrett
told those gathered that she believes “it is the job of a judge to
resist her policy preferences.” She vowed, “I will do my job without any
fear or favor.”
Monday’s vote was the closest high court
confirmation ever to a presidential election, and the first in modern
times with no support from the minority party. The spiking COVID-19
crisis has hung over the proceedings. Vice President Mike Pence declined
to preside at the Senate unless his tie-breaking vote was needed after
Democrats asked him to stay away when his aides tested positive for COVID-19. The vote was 52-48, and Pence’s vote was not necessary.
“Voting
to confirm this nominee should make every single senator proud,” said
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, fending off “outlandish”
criticism in a lengthy speech. During a rare weekend session he declared
that Barrett’s opponents “won’t be able to do much about this for a
long time to come.”
Barrett is expected to take the judicial oath
administered by Chief Justice John Roberts in a private ceremony Tuesday
at the court to begin participating in proceedings.
Underscoring
the political divide during the pandemic, the Republican senators, most
wearing masks, sat in their seats as is tradition for landmark votes,
and applauded the outcome, with fist-bumps. Democratic senators emptied
their side, heeding party leadership’s advice to not linger in the
chamber. A Rose Garden event with Trump to announce Barrett’s nomination
last month ended up spreading the virus, including to some GOP senators
who have since returned from quarantine.
Pence’s presence would
have been expected for a high-profile moment. But Senate Democratic
leader Chuck Schumer and his leadership team said it would not only
violate virus guidelines of the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, “it would also be a violation of common decency and
courtesy.”
Democrats argued for weeks that the vote was being
improperly rushed and insisted during an all-night Sunday session it
should be up to the winner of the Nov. 3 election to name the nominee.
However, Barrett, a federal appeals court judge from Indiana, will be
able swiftly start hearing cases.
Speaking near midnight Sunday,
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., called the vote “illegitimate” and “the
last gasp of a desperate party.”
Several matters are awaiting
decision just a week before Election Day, and Barrett could be a
decisive vote in Republican appeals of orders extending the deadlines
for absentee ballots in North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
The
justices also are weighing Trump’s emergency plea for the court to
prevent the Manhattan District Attorney from acquiring his tax returns.
And on Nov. 10, the court is expected to hear the Trump-backed challenge
to the Obama-era Affordable Care Act.
Just before the Senate vote began, the court sided with Republicans in
refusing to extend the deadline for absentee ballots in Wisconsin.
Trump
has said he wanted to swiftly install a ninth justice to resolve
election disputes and is hopeful the justices will end the health law
known as “Obamacare.”
During several days of public testimony
before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Barrett was careful not to
disclose how she would rule on any such cases.
She presented
herself as a neutral arbiter and suggested, “It’s not the law of Amy.”
But her writings against abortion and a ruling on “Obamacare” show a
deeply conservative thinker.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the
chairman of the Judiciary Committee, praised the mother of seven as a
role model for conservative women. “This is historic,” Graham said.
Republicans
focused on her Catholic faith, criticizing earlier Democratic questions
about her beliefs. Graham called Barrett “unabashedly pro-life.”
At
the start of Trump’s presidency, McConnell engineered a Senate rules
change to allow confirmation by a majority of the 100 senators, rather
than the 60-vote threshold traditionally needed to advance high court
nominees over objections. That was an escalation of a rules change
Democrats put in place to advance other court and administrative
nominees under President Barack Obama.
Republicans are taking a political plunge days from the Nov. 3 election with the presidency and their Senate majority at stake.
Only one Republican — Sen. Susan Collins, who is in a tight reelection fight in Maine
— voted against the nominee, not over any direct assessment of Barrett.
Rather, Collins said, “I do not think it is fair nor consistent to have
a Senate confirmation vote prior to the election.”
Trump and his
Republican allies had hoped for a campaign boost, in much the way 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 the new president should decide.
Most
other Republicans facing tough races embraced the nominee who clerked
for the late Scalia to bolster their standing with conservatives. Sen.
Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said in a speech Monday that Barrett will “go down
in history as one of the great justices.”
But it’s not clear the
extraordinary effort to install the new justice over such opposition in a
heated election year will pay political rewards to the GOP.
Demonstrations for and against the nominee have been more muted at the Capitol under coronavirus restrictions.
Democrats
were unified against Barrett. While two Democratic senators voted to
confirm Barrett in 2017 after Trump nominated the Notre Dame Law School
professor to the appellate court, none voted to confirm her to the high
court.
In a display of party priorities, California Sen. Kamala
Harris, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, returned to Washington
from the campaign trail to join colleagues with a no vote.
No other Supreme Court justice has been confirmed on a recorded vote with no support from 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 Sacramento, Calif., contributed to this report.