Amy Coney Barrett Could Be A Superb Supreme Court Justice. She’s Choosing Not To Be
By Shawn FleetwoodAssociate Justice Amy Coney Barrett has become a sort of enigma among avid Supreme Court observers.
After filling the vacancy left by deceased Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in late 2020, many conservatives were hopeful that the former clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia would offer a much-needed dose of originalism to the high court’s majority of Republican appointees. With Barrett joining Associate Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and (on his good days) Neil Gorsuch, the prospects for decisions abiding by the Constitution as written would be far more likely, or so the conventional thinking went.
To her credit, Barrett has shown the potential do just that. During her time as a justice, the former Notre Dame law professor has been instrumental in overturning Roe v. Wade and Chevron deference, upholding certain religious liberty protections, and several other high-profile matters that have come before the high court in recent years.
However, what continues to stump constitutionalists and Barrett hopefuls alike is the associate justice’s abject failure to consistently apply originalist doctrine in her rulings.
The latest example of this dynamic came on Wednesday, when Barrett signed on to the Supreme Court’s decision in Bondi v. Vanderstok. In its 7-2 ruling, the high court’s majority upheld restrictions put forward by the Biden ATF on so-called “ghost guns” that, according to Fox News, Second Amendment advocacy groups have characterized as “unconstitutional and abusive.”
Authored by Gorsuch, the majority claimed that the 1968 Gun Control Act “embraces, and thus permits ATF to regulate, some weapon parts kits and unfinished frames or receivers, including those” discussed in the case. “Because the court of appeals held otherwise,” Gorsuch wrote, “its judgment is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
Associate Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented in the case, with the latter blasting the majority for “bless[ing] the Government’s overreach based on a series of errors regarding both the standard of review and the interpretation of the statute.”
Much to conservatives’ disappointment, this is hardly the only case in which Barrett has sided with the court’s Democrat and moderate Republican appointees in abandoning originalist doctrine.
Barrett notably authored the majority opinion in the Supreme Court’s 2024 Murthy v. Missouri case, in which she, Chief Justice John Roberts, Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and the court’s leftists arbitrarily ruled that doctors targeted by the Biden-Big Tech censorship-industrial complex and plaintiff states lacked standing to bring the suit. Astonishingly, Barrett wrote that plaintiffs “have not shown that they are likely to face a risk of future censorship traceable” to the Biden administration.
The opinion is so egregiously bad that it was cited by a Democrat senator during a Tuesday Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing to falsely claim the federal government has not engaged in widespread efforts to censor conservatives.
Barrett also found herself on the wrong side of Fischer v. United States, a 2024 case centered on the Biden Justice Department’s weaponization of a provision of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act to target and imprison Jan. 6 protestors. Playing the role of a politician, the former Scalia clerk effectively attempted to rewrite the law’s original meaning by defending the Biden administration’s broad (and incorrect) interpretation of it.
The Biden DOJ’s misuse of the statute was so outlandish that even Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a radical leftist, sided with the court’s originalists (Thomas and Alito) and other GOP appointees in nuking the administration’s efforts.
But inconsistent opinions are only part of the problem with Barrett’s jurisprudence. The associate justice has also garnered a reputation for refusing to take up cases pertaining to matters of imminent national importance.
The most recent instance of this came earlier this month, when Barrett sided with Roberts and the court’s Democrat appointees in declining a request by the Trump administration to vacate an overreaching district court order. Issued by a Biden appointee, the lower court judge directed the State Department and United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to disburse roughly $2 billion in foreign grants to nongovernmental groups.
The majority’s decision to allow the lower court to usurp the constitutional authority of the executive branch left Alito “stunned” and has only further emboldened Democrat-appointed district court judges to continue sabotaging the Trump administration with overreaching injunctions and temporary restraining orders.
A similar example documenting Barrett’s declination to take up important cases occurred nearly a year after she assumed her position on the high court.
In July 2021, the associate justice refused to hear the case of Barronelle Stutzman, a florist from Washington state who was sued for declining to provide floral services for a gay couple’s “wedding” based on religious grounds. By refusing to join Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch in agreeing to bring the matter before the full court (at least four justices are required to do so), Barrett and SCOTUS’s inaction resulted in Stutzman paying a $5,000 settlement to the gay couple, which they reportedly donated to PFLAG — a radical LGBT advocacy group that supports the chemical and surgical mutilation of minors and allowing men to compete in women’s sports.
Barrett’s disappointing decisions since becoming a Supreme Court justice are too numerous to list in one article. And therein lies the problem.
While it’s true that it can take justices some time to get accustomed to the pressures and pace of the high court, the early warning signs do not bode well for Barrett’s SCOTUS career. Thus far, it appears she’s content with following the squishy moderatism of Roberts and Kavanaugh than the originalist approach taken by Thomas and Alito.
What Barrett fails to realize, however, is that her failure to consistently abide by originalist doctrine and willingness to punt on significant issues requiring the court’s immediate attention are placing Americans’ constitutional rights at risk. With leftists weaponizing the legal system to target their political opponents like never before, it is paramount for the Supreme Court to protect citizens’ freedoms and stamp out the judicial supremacism of lower court judges seeking to undermine their will.
Amy Coney Barrett has the potential to be a truly great Supreme Court justice whom Americans can rely on to faithfully interpret their nation’s founding document and defend their rights. But right now, she’s choosing to not be.
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