Kavanaugh’s First Term: A Reliable Conservative Vote (With a Few Surprises)
Published in Mother Jones
The court has already accepted more than 50 cases for the coming term, and Kavanaugh will have a chance to weigh in on more of the country’s thorniest issues, including one case involving the Affordable Care Act, another that could decide the fate of “Dreamers”—the undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children—and most likely more abortion cases. During his confirmation hearing, Kavanaugh repeatedly said that he was an optimist who lived “on the sunshine side of the mountain.” Liberal court watchers aren’t so hopeful about the outcome of those contentious cases.
“To those of us who studied his record, Brett Kavanaugh was a known quantity when he got to the Supreme Court and he’s living up to his hard-right reputation,” says Nan Aron, president of the liberal advocacy group Alliance for Justice. “Kavanaugh came to the Court with a record of hostility to health care and reproductive rights. Like his fellow Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch, he’s shown plenty of willingness to strike down longstanding precedents. So no, we aren’t seeing anything to be optimistic about in terms of how he’ll rule in the future.”