America’s Character Is at Stake With Next Supreme Court Pick
June 27, 2018
America’s Character Is at Stake With Next Supreme Court Pick
Statement of Robert Weissman, President, Public Citizen
Note: Today U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy announced that he will retire from the court. Justice Kennedy sent a letter to President Donald Trump signaling that his retirement will be effective July 31.
This month, the Supreme Court invoked the First Amendment to undermine workers’ rights to join together in unions. Yet it set aside the First Amendment values that it claimed to valorize when legitimizing Trump’s anti-Islamic Muslim ban. And it shrugged off Equal Protection concerns while giving the green light to voter suppression and racial gerrymandering.
As these decisions illustrate, what’s at stake in the next Supreme Court seat is the very character of America. Americans cannot and will not tolerate a pick who will create a majority to take away a woman’s right to control her body; or to backtrack on marriage equality and the rights of LGBTQ people; or to enable racist policies; or to empower corporations to cheat and injure consumers through fabricated doctrines of immunity; or to twist the First Amendment into a tool to protect corporations from regulatory controls; or to eviscerate our democracy by undermining voting rights or by empowering the superrich to dominate our elections; or to reflexively side with Trump in the legal issues regarding potential obstruction of justice or related matters that may very well land at the Supreme Court.
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