Posted on 07/06/2018 2:34:35 AM PDT by familyop
President Donald Trump is said to be down to his final three potential picks to replace pro-abortion Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. Much of the pro-life focus has been on Judge Amy Barrett and leading pro-life advocates strongly support her as a potential nominee.
But there is another potential nominee who is a reported finalist for the position who has very strong pro-life Bona fides and who one leading pro-life attorney says would be an excellent choice for the Supreme Court. That potential nominee is Judge Brett Kavanaugh, who sits on the DC Circuit Court. That is the main federal appeals court — often considered a stepping stone to the Supreme Court as it hears some of the most prominent cases, including ones filed against federal legislation like Obamacare.
Kavanaugh worked as associate counsel to pro-life President George W. Bush and he came out of the era of Reagan judicial appointees. His rulings have been said to be more like Scalia than Kennedy, however.
Sarah Pitlyk, a former law clerk to Judge Kavanaugh and special counsel for the Thomas More Society, which is a leading pro-life legal group, says Kavanaugh has an excellent record and perhaps the best record of any of the finalists president Trump is considering. As she writes:
On the vital issues of protecting religious liberty and enforcing restrictions on abortion, no court-of-appeals judge in the nation has a stronger, more consistent record than Judge Brett Kavanaugh. On these issues, as on so many others, he has fought for his principles and stood firm against pressure. He would do the same on the Supreme Court.
The pro-life attorney is not the one Kavanaugh fan. As Newsmax reports, Ed Meese is a huge supporter.
Ed Meese, President Reagan’s Attorney General and one of his closest associates, has known Kavanaugh for decades and confirmed he has been a solid Reaganite as a judge.
“I know Brett Kavanaugh reasonably well and think highly of him,” Meese told Newsmax.
“He is a very able guy, an originalist who is faithful to the Constitution and believes in it.”
So where does Kavanaugh come down on pro-life issues that affect the yard before his court? In her profile, Pitlyk mentioned three cases where Judge Kavanaugh came down on the pro-life side:
Take another case that arose this year before the D.C. Circuit, Garza v. Hargan. The American Civil Liberties Union sued the Department of Health and Human Services for declining to facilitate an immediate abortion for an unlawful-immigrant minor in federal custody. The district court ruled for the ACLU. On appeal, Judge Kavanaugh and another judge reversed, agreeing with the Trump administration that it did not have to provide an immediate abortion and ordering the district court to give the minor time to find a sponsor so that the government did not have to facilitate the abortion — precisely the relief the administration sought.Keep up with the latest pro-life news and information on Twitter. Follow @LifeNewsHQ When the full D.C. Circuit later vacated that decision and ordered the government to facilitate the abortion immediately, Judge Kavanaugh dissented, stating that the majority had “badly erred” in adopting a “radical extension of the Supreme Court’s abortion jurisprudence.” He again endorsed the Trump administration’s position that it did not have to facilitate an immediate abortion on demand. In his opinion, Judge Kavanaugh emphasized the government’s “permissible interests” in “favoring fetal life” and “refraining from facilitating abortion.”
Judge Kavanaugh also ruled against the Obama HHS mandate that forced Hobby Lobby, Little Sisters of the Poor and other Christian-run businesses and organizations to fund abortion drugs in their employee health care plans.
During the Obama administration, he voted in Priests for Life v. HHS to invalidate the so-called accommodation to the contraceptive mandate, which required religious organizations to sign a form facilitating access to contraceptives for their employees. Judge Kavanaugh was one of few federal judges (Neil Gorsuch was another) to hold that the law imposed a “substantial burden” on the organizations’ exercise of religious liberty, and one of even fewer to conclude that the contraceptive-mandate accommodation violated the law. The Supreme Court later vindicated his position by vacating decisions that upheld the contraceptive-mandate accommodation.
Judge Kavanaugh ruled in favor of Priests for Life, concluding that the Obamacare contraceptive-mandate accommodation violated their religious liberty — another conservative legal ruling that for social conservatives should only build confidence in his judicial philosophy.
Judge Kavanaugh dissented from a court-of-appeals decision upholding Obamacare. He called the individual mandate “unprecedented on the federal level in American history” and said that upholding it would “usher in a significant expansion of congressional authority with no obvious principled limit.” He also explained that “no court to reach the merits has accepted the Government’s Taxing clause argument” and that the taxing clause “has not traditionally authorized a legal prohibition or mandate.”
And Judge Kavanaugh recently upheld pro-life free speech.
The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (i.e., the Metro) bans “issue-oriented advertising,” which it interprets to include religious ads. So when the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington wanted to run an ad with the words “Find the Perfect Gift” and an image of shepherds following a star in the sky during the Christmas season, Metro vetoed the ad. The archdiocese sued Metro for violating the First Amendment speech and religion clauses, as well as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The district court ruled for Metro, and the archdiocese appealed to the D.C. Circuit, where the oral argument pitted Paul Clement (representing the archdiocese), a solicitor general in the George W. Bush administration, against Donald Verrilli (representing the Metro), a solicitor general under Obama. Kavanaugh hammered Verrilli with what the Washington Post called “unrelenting” questioning about the Christmas-ad ban, which the judge described as “pure discrimination” and “odious to the Constitution.”
As Pitlyk concludes: “In short, Judge Kavanaugh’s record on issues of concern to social conservatives is rock solid, and it far exceeds that of any other contender. He is the right person for this pivotal time.”
Time will tell if President Trump selects Judge Kavanaugh, Judge Barrett or someone else to replace the Supreme Court justice who was the 5th vote for upholding Roe v. Wade and invalidating some pro-life laws — but both federal judge would appear to be welcome replacements.
Thomas needs to go ahead and retire. RBG is on death’s door.
Trump can remake the court for over a generation with FOUR picks his first term if that happens.
And the NeverTrumpers were willing to roll the dice on Hillary’s SCOTUS picks?
Insanity!
If I were President Trump, I’d be passing the word quietly to dem senators in red states that if they don’t want to be severely ‘testored’, they better give his nominee to the Supreme Court a favorable vote before October 1.
I can envision a whole lot of Great Falls, MT types of campaign appearances between the vote and election day if the nominee goes down because of purely partisan politics....And not just in red and purple states.
How old is Kavanaugh?
Would be GREAT if PDJT picked someone younger & a determined
Constitutional Conservative that could be on the SCOTUS for a few DECADES.
It appears that Kavanaugh is 53.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brett_Kavanaugh
I also recently noticed a few unsubstantiated claims that he supported Obamacare. Those claims turned out to be false. Kavanaugh dissented against the Affordable Care Act in 2011. That’s mentioned in old news all over the Net, but here’s one of the many links.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/holding-court
He’s HRC’s boy..and Deep State gofer
http://www.fbicover-up.com/miguel-rodriguez.html
Miguel Rodriguez discovered that the investigators were treating witnesses inappropriately. Deputy Independent Counsels John Bates and Mark Tuohey and Associate Independent Counsel Brett Kavanaugh used the FBI to harass and intimidate witnesses who had no reason to lie. Witnesses who told investigators Foster’s gray car was not at Fort Marcy Park were re-interviewed, harassed, and intimidated. The goal of Starr’s office was to silence witnesses whose accounts contradicted its desired result.
Re ObamaCare
“Both Judges Sutton and Kavanaugh found ways to uphold the ACA while avoiding the constitutional question and to send this dispute back to the elected branches of government. Both opinions evinced the principles of judicial restraint. Rather than engaging the constitutional issues, Kavanaugh’s and Sutton’s opinions chose to avoid them. Both sought to avoid deciding the constitutional issue today, and either require the suits to be brought in the future or, even better, place their hope in the political process to fix the mess. “
here are the reports..u decide
he looks like a swamp rat IMHO
You might be on to something. That Montana rally might well have been designed to be a warning shot to those dems who are vulnerable in the November election.
What happened to Hardiman - Trump’s number 2 guy last time? Wouldn’t he be logically up next?
Steven Ertelt has promoted GOPe individuals to prolifers before.
“It appears that Kavanaugh is 53.”
The age is perfect. He’s already well-seasoned in the federal courts, and he has plenty of rubber left on the tires.
Very nice, but are we to forget that it was Kavanaugh, in one of his rulings, that wrote a road map for Roberts with Obamacare, as to how to get around the tax vs penalty issue. Roberts did not pull that out of a hat. He read Kavanaughs work and found the remedy, he, Robnerts, wanted to precisely NOT invalidate Obamacare wholesale.
Kavanaugh is part of the Bush family stable (look at his bio). I think he is a Trojan horse.
Thomas must live forever - he may be the first true originalist to sit on the Court since before FDR (yes, I'm excluding Scalia, who embraced Wickard v Filburn when it suited him).
That's a good and conservative thing, FYI.
Thomas is great. Best up there with Scalia gone.
But he’s aging. You’re looking at THIRTY YEARS of another solid conservative. Versus risking a change to the left in four years.
Why role the dice?
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