As a woman and a Notre Dame student, the university’s support of Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States is embarrassing and insulting. The nomination of a non-Ivy-League-educated justice serves as a compliment to the education that Notre Dame provides, but Barrett does not reflect the values of the university or of the American population. In her time on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Barrett has demonstrated her utter and complete disregard for racial equality, women’s rights, reproductive healthcare, access to affordable healthcare, marriage equality, and LGBTQA+ rights; she has been criticized by individuals on both sides of the aisle for her “fundamentally cruel vision of the law.” She refuses to follow the doctrine of stare decisis, which binds her to previously settled law. Her appointment directly threatens the most basic freedoms of nearly all Americans, and in choosing to support her, Notre Dame is endorsing a disregard for the essential human rights that this nation is obligated to protect.
Amy Coney Barrett’s appointment will likely contribute to the destruction of healthcare rights for millions of Americans, including for those with pre-existing conditions. The Court’s ability to overturn the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which millions of Americans rely upon to cover their healthcare costs, relies on the new justice’s vote on the issue. Access to healthcare is a basic human right that the Court must protect, and Chief Justice Roberts, while a conservative voice on the Court, has continued to uphold its importance under the law; Barrett has publicly criticized Roberts’ decision. Barrett also maintains that life begins at conception, supporting the reversal of Roe v. Wade. This decision would effectively endanger the lives of countless women who will otherwise seek unsafe and unregulated forms of abortion. Barrett’s appointment would directly threaten access to general and reproductive healthcare, but her impact on the Court would continue beyond her disregard for this basic human right.
Barrett continues to weaken laws that protect women beyond their reproductive rights. She lessened Title IX protections offered to survivors of sexual assault at collegiate institutions; her ruling created more opportunities for those held accountable for sexual assault to sue their school for any punitive measures taken against them. She personally believes in female subordination to men due to her religious membership to the group People of Praise, the group that inspired Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Under her originalist doctrine on the Court, Barrett believes that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment should not apply to gender discrimination because this interpretation was not how the clause would have been intended at the time it was written. Any legal protections against discrimination on the basis of sex would be challenged with Barrett on the Supreme Court.
Similarly, Barrett opposes basic LGBTQA+ rights protections and marriage equality. Justices Thomas and Alito called for Obergefell v. Hodges to be overturned in a dissent on the first day of the term, October 5, chalking up the right to marry as a “novel constitutional right.” Barrett has also refused to extend protections against gender discrimination to transgender individuals. With Barrett in their corner, the Supreme Court will likely not continue any protections of marriage equality or of the rights of the LGBTQA+ community.
Perhaps most importantly, Barrett supports returning to the Plessy v. Ferguson logic of “separate but equal,” the justification for Jim Crow laws. In the case United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. Autozone, Inc., Barrett ruled that segregation of employees by race was constitutional so long as the two places of employment were equal. This logic has not been upheld since 1954, when Brown v. Board of Education concluded that segregation could never lead to equality. Threatening protections against racial discrimination is an egregious violation of the Fourteenth Amendment and Barrett’s support of “separate but equal” logic should terrify and anger all Americans.
The Notre Dame Law alumni have not publicly criticized Barrett’s nomination, unlike her undergraduate school, Rhodes College in Memphis. The college generated more than 1,500 vocal alums with concerns about her appointment, criticizing her opinions regarding abortion law, the Affordable Care Act and LGBTQA+ rights, among others. Barrett does not support and will not protect the rights of anyone other than a wealthy, white, cisgender, heterosexual man, which is precisely why Notre Dame’s administration has no business congratulating her and themselves on her nomination. It’s insulting and embarrassing as a globally-renowned university and as a Catholic institution that the university would even consider supporting someone who so deliberately works to destroy basic human rights of those often marginalized and subordinated. The decision of the administration to attend her nomination ceremony, an egregious violation of all COVID-19 protocols that backfired spectacularly on the federal government and the university, was made in poor taste and in utter disregard for the direct threat Barrett poses to the rights of many members of the Notre Dame community.