Blog home Trends & Issues What’s at stake with Trump’s Supreme Court nominee: health care and civil rights

What’s at stake with Trump’s Supreme Court nominee: health care and civil rights

Ben Jealous (he/him)
October 5, 2020

Senate Republicans’ rush to fill the vacant U.S. Supreme Court seat before the election is a terrible blow to Black people’s civil rights and the health of our communities.

In her twenty-seven years on the Supreme Court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a champion of civil rights. During those same years, Republican presidents and senators moved the court further and further from its duty to protect racial equity and the rights of working people.

During the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, we counted on the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold the constitutional principle of equality under law. We have counted on federal courts to enforce the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, federal laws that finally put the force of law behind the idea that Black people are included in the U.S. Constitution’s opening words, “We, the people…”

Today’s Supreme Court, in contrast, is a far cry from the court that did away with legal segregation, a far cry from the court that upheld civil rights laws won with the blood, sweat, and tears of Black people and our allies in the struggle for equality.

Justice Ginsburg was often a key vote in 5-4 decisions that protected civil rights, and as the right solidified its power on the court, she was often a prophetic voice dissenting from abominations like the gutting of the Voting Rights Act in 2013.

As part of a political deal to help him win the White House, Donald Trump turned over selection of judges to a hard-right legal movement that wants to reverse many of the social justice gains of the past century.

Any Trump nominee would have been a threat to the causes for which Ginsburg devoted her life.

Judge Amy Coney Barrett believes Obamacare is unconstitutional, and there’s a case coming before the Supreme Court just a week after the election that will give her and other right-wing justices a chance to undermine access to health care and legal protections for pre-existing conditions, right in the middle of a pandemic.

In a case that raises alarms about her commitment to racial equity, Coney Barrett voted to deny a hearing to a Black man who worked for a company that assigned staff to different stores based on their race.

If she is confirmed, our ability to count on federal courts to protect our rights will be diminished further. Yet just a month before Election Day, with many Americans already voting, this is a top priority for Senate Republicans.

Here’s what Senate Republicans aren’t doing while they confirm every judicial appointee, no matter how extreme or unqualified, President Trump sends their way:

Dealing with the COVID crisis that is killing Black and brown people at a far higher rate than white people — or providing sufficient relief for working people thrown into dire economic straits by the pandemic.

Taking up the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would bring back federal protections for voting rights that were once embraced by politicians from both parties.

Acting on the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which would bring greater accountability to law enforcement and protect people of color from racist and discriminatory policing.

The push by Trump and Senate Republicans to shift the Supreme Court to the right while ignoring the urgent needs of our community and our demands for justice is the ultimate evidence of how important this election is to America, especially to Black America.

Do not sit this one out. Get registered. Make a plan to vote. And vote like your life depends on it.

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About the author

Ben Jealous (he/him)

President, People For the American Way
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Ben Jealous is president of People For the American Way and the People For the American Way Foundation. A graduate of Columbia University and Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, Jealous became the youngest-ever president and CEO of the NAACP in 2008.

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