Several weeks ago, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson seemingly suggested that conservative criticisms of Democrats’ ongoing judicial coup against President Trump amounted to “attacks on our democracy.” Not even a month later, the junior justice is effectively endorsing real leftist suppression of democracy.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court granted temporary relief to Maine Republican Rep. Laurel Libby. As The Federalist’s Breccan Thies previously reported, the state rep had her “voting and speaking rights” stripped by Maine’s Democrat-controlled House after she published “a social media post where she called out a male athlete, who claimed to be a female, for stealing a title from females at a sporting event.”
“Libby would be forced to issue a public apology in order to regain speaking and voting rights,” Thies noted.
While seven of the justices agreed it was necessary that Libby be able to freely speak and vote on behalf of her constituents in the state legislature, two apparently did not: Jackson and Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor. The order released by SCOTUS noted that both Democrat appointees would have denied Libby’s application.
Clearly not satisfied with merely acknowledging her position on the issue, Jackson — who seemingly slow-walked Libby’s emergency petition — took it upon herself to pen a multi-page dissent, in which she chastised her colleagues for granting the Maine Republican’s call for help.
“We have long recognized that this injunctive relief is appropriate only when ‘critical and exigent circumstances’ exist necessitating intervention ‘in aid of [our] jurisdictio[n],’ and the applicants’ entitlement to relief is ‘indisputably clear,’” Jackson wrote. “In my view, these applicants have not met this high bar.”
While the junior justice listed several reasons to justify her dissent in granting Libby’s application, the one that sticks out most glaringly involves her assessment of the immediate need for relief in the case. She wrote:
The First Circuit is moving quickly to evaluate the legal issues this case presents, with oral argument scheduled to occur in a few weeks. Meanwhile, before us, the applicants have not asserted that there are any significant legislative votes scheduled in the upcoming weeks; that there are any upcoming votes in which Libby’s participation would impact the outcome; or that they will otherwise suffer any concrete, imminent, and significant harm while the lower court considers this matter.
Consider the absurdity of what Jackson is saying. In effect, she — and by default, Sotomayor — is arguing that it’s not urgent for SCOTUS to address Maine Democrats’ continued censuring of Libby because there aren’t any “significant” upcoming votes currently scheduled to take place and that, because she’s in the minority party, her vote won’t “impact the outcome.”
That outlandish rationalization is a combination of full-blown foolishness and left-wing partisanship.
Just because there may not be any — according to Jackson’s standards — “significant” votes currently slated to occur at this point in time, that doesn’t guarantee one or multiple won’t be scheduled within the time frame the junior justice referenced in her ill-informed hot take.
Nor is there any way to definitively know whether Libby’s vote will impact the outcome of the legislature’s consideration of any given bill. That is pure speculation and a complete abdication of proper jurisprudence.
That two Supreme Court justices would willingly sit on their hands while a duly elected representative is unfairly silenced for acknowledging biological reality is objectively horrifying. Then again, it’s not surprising when considering one of them can’t even define what a woman is.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
