by Steven Richards
Conservative pundits, online commentators, and some lawmakers have cast blame on Justice Amy Coney Barrett over two high-profile cases important to the Trump administration’s political goals, including birthright citizenship and mail-in-voting.
In one of those cases, Barrett and Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the court’s liberal Justices on Monday to uphold a law that allowed Mississippi to count mailed ballots after Election Day as long as they were postmarked by that date and received within five days—a blow to Republican efforts to restrict mail-in-voting ahead of the midterm elections.
Then, on Thursday, both Barrett and Roberts again sided with the liberals to uphold birthright citizenship for illegal immigrants and noncitizen visitors alike in Trump v. Barbara and rebuke President Donald Trump’s executive order revoking automatic citizenship in such cases.
Though Roberts also joined in these rulings, Barrett has faced the brunt of the criticism and attacks from Republicans and conservatives who believe those cases were wrongly decided.
“Turncoat” or “Honest Broker”?
Barrett, who was nominated for the high court by President Trump in 2020 to replace the late Ruth Bader Ginsberg, was central in further cementing the court’s current conservative majority. But, some conservatives see these most recent rulings as a betrayal and their criticisms go beyond substance.
“Amy Coney Barrett is a turncoat,” said former television host Megyn Kelly on her Sirius XM show after the ruling in the election case earlier this week. “She’s constantly siding with the left.”
“Amy Coney Barrett should be removed from the Bench,” said Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., after the birthright citizenship ruling.
“It turns out that Amy Coney Barrett is a DEI hire, little better than Kentanji Jackson. Terrible pick,” said Daily Wire podcast host Matt Walsh. “When’s the last time we had a Republican president who didn’t put a liberal justice on the court?”
Others accused Barrett of inflicting terrible consequences on the country, including its future destruction.
“There’s something kind of twisted and ironically entertaining about how Senator Mitch McConnell is on his deathbed the same day Amy Coney Barrett, the US Supreme Court justice who he urged President Trump to choose, decided to vote against President Trump’s birthright citizenship Executive Order, effectively sending our country to the grave,” said conservative firebrand Laura Loomer.
The College Republicans chapter at Barrett’s law school, Notre Dame, called the Justice an “absolute disgrace to the Notre Dame name.” The club wrote on X: “We apologize on her behalf to all who will suffer the devastating consequences of infinity third-world migration.”
Legal scholars, both those who disagreed with the ruling and those who didn’t, came to Barrett’s defense.
“There are good-faith arguments on both sides of the birthright citizenship case”: Turley
Amy Swearer, a Senior Legal Fellow at Advancing American Freedom and whose work was cited by Justice Clarence Thomas in his dissent in the birthright citizenship case, defended Barrett even though she personally disagrees with her reasoning. “Justice Barrett is wrong about the Citizenship Clause,” Swearer wrote. “But some of y’all out here acting like […] Barrett hasn’t been solid on so many issues *including the other opinions today* …”
“Grow up. Control your emotions,” she added.
Jonathan Turley, George Washington University Law School professor and legal commentator, also disagreed with the court’s ruling, but defended Barrett.
“Barrett hit a nerve as one of the three Trump appointees, whom many hoped would be more in the vein of Samuel Alito or Thomas. Instead, she often writes with Roberts,” he wrote. “The attacks on Barrett ignored that there are good-faith arguments on both sides of the birthright citizenship case. They also ignore the fact that she regularly voted with the conservatives and for positions of the administration.”
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Steven Richards is a reporter for Just the News.
