Conservatives Defend Justice Barrett After Votes Against Trump

Several high-profile conservatives are defending Justice Amy Coney Barrett in the face of right-wing criticism of her early votes against President Donald Trump’s policies.

Barrett, the last of three justices that Trump appointed to the high court during his first term, partially joined the court’s three liberal justices April 7 in dissenting from the court’s ruling on Trump’s deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members. She earlier ruled against the administration March 5 in its attempt to halt funding for USAID.

She’s also ruled in favor of the Trump administration on efforts to pull back teacher grants related to DEI efforts and fire thousands of federal workers.

Her vote on deportations was met with harsh rebukes from conservatives who labeled her a “liberal” and “woke” justice.

“I think she’s lost and confused,” said South Texas College of Law Houston professor Josh Blackman. “This is not the mark of a person who has a measured approach to the law.”

Others praised Barrett for her independence, saying her votes against the president who nominated her show that she’s a principled jurist.

“If the only criticism is that she’s not in the right column often enough, I think that’s way off base,” said Thomas Jipping, a senior fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

The Supreme Court has already weighed in on a number of emergency requests related to Trump’s early executive orders and is expected to receive more in the coming months, as challenges to those policies work their way through the courts.

Barrett, 53, joined the court shortly before the 2020 presidential election, after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The longtime Notre Dame law professor was nominated to serve on the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit by Trump.

Anger directed at Barrett has had real-world consequences. Charleston, South Carolina, police said Barrett’s sister was targeted with a bomb threat after she voted against letting the administration withhold foreign aid payments, ABC News and other news organizations have reported.

Overturning Roe

Barrett’s votes so far have been on procedural matters, Jipping said.

Both the funding question and the deportation rulings dealt with what kind of lawsuit could be brought and in what court. He also noted that Barrett has ruled with the Trump administration elsewhere, including on last term’s immunity ruling.

“You can’t go by thumbs up, thumbs down on individual cases,” Jipping said. “You have to look at how a judge does judging.”

On that scale, she’s been the kind of justice that conservatives want, taking a generally originalist perspective and modest view of the role of the judiciary, Jipping said.

“She was the fifth vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, I want to tell my conservative friends,” Jipping said, referring to her vote in the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Heath Organization ruling.

Balls and Strikes

Barrett’s detractors also included some congressional Republicans.

“Every justice that voted in the dissent embraced an unprecedented principle in American law that the chief executive lacks the ability to enforce our immigration laws and remove dangerous criminals and terrorists from the United States,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told Bloomberg Law. “It’s disappointing that four justices were ready to create a brand new rule to protect murderers and child rapists and Venezuelan gang members.”

Others Senate Republicans came to her defense.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) called Barrett a “fine justice,” who “calls it like she sees it.”

And Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said it was wrong to characterize justices as reliably liberal or conservative, saying their job is to act as a neutral umpire “calling balls and strikes.”

“In this case, I think that Amy is just showing an independence that I hope to find, even when it doesn’t really produce an outcome that I’d prefer,” Tillis said.

Political Dogma

Georgetown law professor Michele Goodwin said the criticism from the right reflects more about conservatives than it does of Barrett.

In breaking with the Trump administration, Barrett is “standing within a set of values and principles,” Goodwin said.

Pushback on that reveals that the right-wing movement “isn’t about respect for the rule of law,” she said. “It’s about bending to political dogma and will.”