During an appearance on MSNBC on Wednesday morning, University of Michigan law professor Leah Litman singled out a new opinion authored by Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett that should pour cold water on the notion that the liberal wing of the court can count on her as a reliable ally.
In a recent piece in the New York Times, the paper's Jodi Kantor wrote that conservatives are growing more and more disenchanted with Donald Trump's pick to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, suggesting she signs of a "leftward tilt."
In a separate concurrence on Wednesday, after the court upheld a Tennessee law banning transgender medical care for minors that includes puberty blockers and hormone treatments, Coney Barrett opened the door that the court could and should go even further.
"Concerning is the fact that Justice Barrett wrote separately, together with Justice [Clarence] Thomas, and she seemed to think that Justice [Sam] Alito's separate writing also agreed with her to say that even if a law just targeted the transgender community, singled out transgender individuals as such, it would still not trigger heightened scrutiny," she told host Ana Cabrera, "And that opens up the door for much more invidious targeted discrimination, potentially."
"And Leah, I understand you have some other thoughts on Justice Coney Barrett's part of the decision here ––break it down," the MSNBC host prompted her guest.
"So the fact that she was willing to go bigger and adopt a ruling that is more broad than the majority, I think, should really lay to rest the wishful hopes that she is some sort of moderate on the Supreme Court, at least when it comes to issues of social policy," she suggested. "Because her writing would allow states to do more damage and harm to the trans community than the majority did."
"And so that really tees up the question: why bother writing separately when you can decide the case on these narrower grounds? Why invite states and potentially the federal government to do more harm for this community?" she asked.
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