Joe Biden made a promise to appoint a Black woman to the U.S. Supreme Court if he were elected, and he delivered on that promise.
To me, such a vow is grossly prejudicial and discriminatory, eliminating every other qualified candidate just so that a box could be checked.
Biden appointed Ketanji Brown Jackson to the highest court in the land, and she has been a firebrand since her very first case. But the justice's latest meltdown on the court is proving conservatives right that she has no business sitting on that bench.
In a June dissent, Jackson went nuclear on her fellow justices in a ruling that fell 7-2 in favor of fuel producers challenging an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule.
In that dissent, Jackson stated, "This case gives fodder to the unfortunate perception that moneyed interests enjoy an easier road to relief in this court than ordinary citizens.”
She later added, "Also, I worry that the fuel industry's gain comes at a reputational cost for this court, which is already viewed by many as being overly sympathetic to corporate interests.”
This was one in a string of dissents she would issue that seemed personal in nature, as well as including a bit of grandstanding, in my opinion.
When the court gives a ruling or a dissenting opinion, the personal feelings of justices are of no interest. The outcome should be about the law and about the way the justices interpret that law relative to the facts at hand.
That, however, is not how Jackson approaches her job.
She believes that these decisions are a platform for her to tell people how she personally feels, stating, "I just feel that I have a wonderful opportunity to tell people in my opinions how I feel about the issues, and that's what I try to do.”
Her comments to that effect were highly criticized at the time, and conservatives started to press the notion that she was not qualified for the bench.
During oral arguments this week in a case surrounding the redrawing of congressional districts based on race, Jackson compared minorities to disabled people, leaving everyone scratching their heads. Not only that, but she continuously cut off attorneys while they were trying to make their supporting arguments, appearing completely unhinged.
In questioning the effort to block redistricting on a plainly racial basis, Jackson responded, “The idea in Section 2 [of the Voting Rights Act] is that we are responding to current-day manifestations of past and present decisions that disadvantage minorities and make it so that they don’t have equal access to the voting system, right?” She then added, “They’re disabled.”
She then tried to explain her position, stating, “Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act against the backdrop of a world that was generally not accessible to people with disabilities, and so it was discriminatory in effect because these folks were not able to access these buildings.” She continued, “And it didn’t matter whether the person who built the building or the person who owned the building intended for them to be exclusionary. That’s irrelevant. Congress said the facilities have to be made equally open to people with disabilities if readily possible. I guess I don’t understand why that’s not what’s happening here.”
When an attorney questioned the comparison of minority voters to disabled voters, Jackson quickly interrupted again, confusing everyone present with her argument linking race to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This woman is now clearly grandstanding, and she is clearly ill-suited to a spot on that bench. She is an activist, not a jurist, which is where, sadly, a large segment of today's judicial branch seems headed.
