Posted on 12/11/2018 1:01:49 PM PST by Liberty7732
New U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh has been exactly what many of us who preferred other potential high court nominees, such as Amy Coney Barrett, thought he would be — avoiding controversy and hewing too closely to stare decisis, making legal decisions based on previous legal rulings rather than the wording of the law.
And it’s possible that the dirtiest, meanest, most reprehensible of all confirmation hearings may have made him even more hesitant to take on the most controversial issues of our time — particularly the kingpin of them all: abortion.
This was revealed again Monday when the Supreme Court declined to accept two lower-court rulings that blocked states from cutting off funding to Planned Parenthood — what seems like an eminently states’ rights issue. In that decision, Kavanaugh joined one moderate justice and all of the Court’s liberal justices in letting the lower court ruling stand.
It kind of makes a farce of all the shrill hysteria about how Kavanaugh was going to return women to back-alley, coat-hanger abortions. Of course, the whole hearing and surrounding leftist circus was a sham from beginning to bitter end — including threats to try to impeach Kavanaugh.
The Washington Post reported:
New Justice Brett Kavanaugh did not join the court’s three most conservative members in calling to accept the cases. Justice Clarence Thomas rebuked his colleagues for what he said was a dodge, attributing it to their aversion to taking up the issue of abortion that lurked in the case.
“Some tenuous connection to a politically fraught issue does not justify abdicating our judicial duty,” Thomas wrote. “If anything, neutrally applying the law is all the more important when political issues are in the background.”
Thomas’s dissent from the court’s decision to pass on the case revealed a split among the court’s five conservatives: Justices Samuel Alito Jr. and Neil Gorsuch signed on to the statement. Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. did not.
Four justices are required to vote in favor of accepting a case. So essentially, Kavanaugh was the deciding vote, and he went with moderate Roberts and the liberals on the court.
So much hysteria in September. So little need.
Louisiana and Kansas announced plans to end funding for Planned Parenthood through Medicaid after an anti-abortion group released videos in 2015 that revealed Planned Parenthood executives laughingly discussing the sale of baby parts. Both were challenged in Gee v. Planned Parenthood of Gulf Coast and Andersen v. Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri.
The two cases raise the issue of whether individuals receiving Medicaid — which is dispensed through each state — have a right to challenge a state’s decision to cut off funding to Planned Parenthood. Five lower courts said the recipients of Medicaid do, while one said they do not.
Typically when there is a split at the appeals court level, the Supreme Court will take the case to make the final ruling. Justice Clarence Thomas was clearly frustrated when he wrote his dissent on the decision.
“What explains the court’s refusal to do its job here? I suspect it has something to do with the fact that some respondents in these cases are named ‘Planned Parenthood,” he wrote. “It is true that these particular cases arose after several states alleged that Planned Parenthood affiliates had, among other things, engaged in ‘the illegal sale of fetal organs’ and ‘fraudulent billing practices,’ and thus removed Planned Parenthood as a state Medicaid provider.”
But Thomas went on to explain this was not an abortion issue. At stake are the rights of individuals under a major federal law.
“…these cases are not about abortion rights. They are about private rights of action under the Medicaid Act. Resolving the question presented here would not even affect Planned Parenthood’s ability to challenge the states’ decisions.”
Still, Roberts and Kavanaugh ducked it. There will be more opportunities. But the trendline is not good.
If the Democrats takeaway is that even when they cannot stop a nominee they can scar the person into less conservative action, nominations will become even worse — if possible.
I appreciated Justice Thomas’ comments, but the GOP congress should have defunded Planned Parenthood.
The house and senate included that Federal $ in the Budget and Trump signed off on it to MM(ilitary)GA.
The problem is Republicans in Congress authorized federal funding.
Yep@ Remember how he praised Justice Kennedy? Kennedy was the swing vote and along with Obama lover Roberts we are in trouble with the Supremes.
I sometimes think that these confirmation-hearing confrontations are not so much meant to keep the nominee off of the court as to cow him into future submission, so as to prove how “independent” he is, to prove his critics wrong.
Consider what would be if they took the case and Roberts voted with the libs.
Better to wait till we another conservative on the bench.
I refuse to read any article about this subject that contains such verifiably false information up front.
How can anything be a "states' rights" issue when it involves Federal Medicaid funding?
Agreed - it’s hardly credible to complain about SCOTUS when we’ve had GOP majorities for most of the past two decades and they keep funding PP anyway.
Just look at who the GOP Speakers have been - Boehner and Ryan. How did these two, who could not be more unrepresentative of GOP coalition on a broad range of issues, end up controlling the GOP agenda?
Nobody thought Kavanaugh would overturn Roe v. Wade. The guy is GOP-Establishment and has always been their favorite. It’s why I didn’t want him to be nominated but Trump chose him in the futile hope that the Democrats wouldn’t go nuclear in the confirmation process.
He was a moderate, hand picked by Kennedy as a moderate. Trump should have chosen someone more likely to follow the Constitution. We need SCJ to support the Constitution, not party political agendas. Trump should pick someone more like Clarence Thomas and Scalia.
Roberts went from “conservative” to “moderate” in record time. Bush’s last turdgift to the American people.
Exactly...it is Congress’s job to fund or not fund.
Same as Obamacare.
They wrote it as a tax, it became a tax.
Yep. When you control all three levers of the purse strings, planned murderhood should have been off the books day one.
Let’s pray to the Lord and not be so quick to jump, like a kangaroo, to conclusions.
For some reason our picks always moderate it seems....you never see rbg moderate on any issue.
But again, what an occasion for Judge Kavanaugh to see how mean spirited so many of soi-disant “liberals” are! They are quite illiberal. That understanding is going to be branded on his brain now. They could rue the day that they unveiled their colors.
Apparently the two justices who voted together more often than any other pair during that term were -- get this -- Clarence Thomas and Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Go figure.
Every single Democratic nominee for SCOTUS since at least the 1940s has been a dependable, lifelong hardcore Communist. Every single one.
How do they get that performance and we get this crap?
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