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      US supreme court rules against air force officer who refused Covid vaccine

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      US supreme court rules against air force officer who refused Covid vaccine Majority of court sides with Pentagon over challenge by lieutenant colonel who cited religious grounds for refusal to get vaccine The supreme court has allowed the US Department of Defense to take disciplinary action against an air force lieutenant colonel who refuses to get a Covid-19 vaccine.In a brief, two-sentence ruling on Monday, a majority of the court sided with the Pentagon. Three justices in the conservative majority – Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch – dissented.The ruling was merely the court’s latest on challenges to Covid-19 vaccine mandates.In January, the court blocked a Biden administration requirement that employees of large businesses be vaccinated and wear masks on the job.The court ruled in March that the US navy had the authority to determine the job assignments of 35 service members who refused to get vaccinated.The case in question on Monday involved Lt Col Jonathan Dunn, previously commander of a 40-member squadron in California, according to court documents filed by the US solicitor general, Elizabeth Prelogar.Prelogar argued that while Dunn cited religious grounds for his refusal to get vaccinated, he did not “assert that the Covid-19 vaccine or compulsory vaccination in general is inconsistent with his Christian faith”, noting that he has received other vaccinations without objection.Dunn instead cited a speech given by Joe Biden that led him to conclude that “the vaccine ceased to be merely a medical invention and took on a symbolic and even sacramental quality”.His religion, he said, forbade him from participating in such “religious ritual”.Upon denial of his exemption request, Dunn sent to a major general “a one-word memorandum that simply read: ‘NUTS!’”.Prelogar noted that while Dunn maintains he meant no disrespect, “NUTS!” has a “well-known ‘military historical connotation’”.She cited the case of Anthony McAuliffe, a key US military officer in the second world war who responded to a German message requesting American surrender with the one-worded answer. The American officer who delivered McAuliffe’s message to German officers clarified that, “If you don’t understand what ‘nuts’ means, in plain English, it is the same as ‘Go to hell.’”The court documents say that the air force took disciplinary action against Dunn, including his removal from command and non-punitive disciplinary measures, citing his commanding officer who said he had “lost trust in [Dunn’s] leadership and judgment” due to the memorandum and that he displayed a “pattern of a lack of respect for military authority”. Prelogar said that Dunn’s actions independent of his refusal to be vaccinated warranted the measures against him.The US solicitor general also said that Dunn’s unit has to be ready to be deployed anywhere in the world with as little as three days’ notice, including countries that require proof of vaccination for entry. Prelogar also noted that the military has a long history of requiring vaccinations and currently requires nine vaccinations for service members.The deadline for air force members to get vaccinated was 2 November. In December, an air force spokesperson told NBC News that the military branch discharged 27 active-duty members who refused to get the vaccination and were not exempted. The US military that same month said 97% of its service members had received the Covid-19 vaccine.TopicsUS supreme courtLaw (US)CoronavirusUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      in Elections

      Attempt to bar Marjorie Taylor Greene from Congress can proceed, judge says

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      Attempt to bar Marjorie Taylor Greene from Congress can proceed, judge saysFederal judge cites ‘whirlpool of colliding constitutional interests’ in allowing 14th-amendment challenge to far-right Republican An attempt to bar the far-right Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene from Congress over her support for the January 6 attack can proceed, a federal judge said.‘Election integrity summits’ aim to fire up Trump activists over big lieRead moreCiting “a whirlpool of colliding constitutional interests of public import”, Amy Totenberg of the northern district of Georgia sent the case on to a state hearing on Friday.A coalition of liberal groups is behind the challenge, citing the 14th amendment to the US constitution, passed after the civil war.The amendment says: “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath … to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”Supporters of Donald Trump attacked the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, seeking to stop certification of his defeat by Joe Biden. A bipartisan Senate committee connected seven deaths to the riot. About 800 people have been charged, some with seditious conspiracy.Trump was impeached for inciting an insurrection. Acquitted, he is free to run again.Organisers of events in Washington on January 6 have tied Greene to their efforts. Greene has denied such links and said she does not encourage violence.In October, however, she told a radio show: “January 6 was just a riot at the Capitol and if you think about what our Declaration of Independence says, it says to overthrow tyrants.”In the immediate aftermath of the Capitol attack, Greene was one of 147 Republicans in Congress who objected to results in battleground states, an effort inspired by Trump’s lies about electoral fraud.An effort to use the 14th amendment against Madison Cawthorn, an extremist from North Carolina, was unsuccessful, after a judge ruled an 1872 civil war amnesty law was not merely retroactive.In her ruling on Greene’s attempt to dismiss her challenge, on Monday, Totenberg said: “This case involves a whirlpool of colliding constitutional interests of public import. Upon a thorough analysis of each of the claims asserted in this case, the court concludes that [Greene] has not carried her burden of persuasion.”Even if a state judge rules against Greene, she could challenge the ruling. The Georgia primary is on 25 May, cutting time short. Greene seems likely to win re-election.Writing for the Guardian this month, the Georgetown University professor Thomas Zimmer said: “Greene’s position within the Republican party seems secure … in fact, Greene is the poster child of a rising group of rightwing radicals … [not] shy about their intention to purge whatever vestiges of ‘moderate’ conservatism might still exist within the Republican party.”Extremists like Marjorie Taylor Greene are the future of the Republican party | Thomas ZimmerRead moreOne of the groups behind the challenge to Greene is Free Speech for the People. In January, the group’s legal director, Ron Fein, told the Guardian the group aimed to set “a line that says that just as the framers of the 14th amendment wrote and intended, you can’t take an oath to support the constitution and then facilitate an insurrection against the United States while expecting to pursue public office”.On Monday, Fein said: “We look forward to asking Representative Greene about her involvement [in January 6] under oath.”Mike Rasbury, an activist with the Bernie Sanders-affiliated Our Revolution group and a plaintiff in the lawsuit against Greene, said he was “elated” by Totenberg’s ruling.Greene, Rasbury said, “took an oath of office to protect democracy from all enemies foreign and domestic, just as I did when I became a helicopter pilot for the US army in Vietnam. However, she has flippantly ignored this oath and, based on her role in the January 6 insurrection, is disqualified … from holding any future public office”.TopicsRepublicansThe far rightUS Capitol attackUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsUS constitution and civil libertiesnewsReuse this content More

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      Mood as light as spring air as Ketanji Brown Jackson delivers words to remember

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      Mood as light as spring air as Ketanji Brown Jackson delivers words to remember After 232 years, a Black woman is on the supreme court – and the atmosphere on a sunny Washington day was celebratoryThey could all feel the weight of history. Yet the mood was as light as spring air when Ketanji Brown Jackson looked out at the crowd of smiling faces.‘It means the world to us’: Black lawmakers’ euphoria greets Jackson confirmationRead more“It has taken 232 years and 115 prior appointments for a Black woman to be selected to serve on the supreme court of the United States,” the judge said in bright sunshine. “But we’ve made it!”The audience on the South Lawn of the White House rose and clapped and hollered with a rare purity of emotion.Jackson added: “We’ve made it – all of us. All of us. And our children are telling me that they see now more than ever that here in America anything is possible.”It felt like the culmination of a journey. A day earlier, Jackson was confirmed by the Senate as the first African American female supreme court justice. In moving remarks on Friday, she spoke not only of her journey but that of her ancestors: the 400-year story of African Americans meeting slavery and segregation with resilience, creativity and hope.The atmosphere at the White House was joyful and celebratory – not a sentence there has been much cause to write over the past five years. No doom and gloom over Donald Trump’s lies, the deadly pandemic or the war in Ukraine. Instead, the marine band played songs from the shows, including West Side Story. (“I like to be in America…”)And after a week of sombre grey skies, lashing rain and surging coronavirus, the White House looked a little more majestic than usual in radiant sunlight. Fifty Stars and Stripes flags fluttered in a row. Birds could be heard singing. The relaxed, jovial crowd of hundreds erupted as Joe Biden, wearing shades, Vice-President Kamala Harris and Jackson strode to the podium, to the strains of “Hail to the chief”.But it was Jackson’s grace note at the end of the 45-minute pageant that will linger in the memory – and the heart – and be studied by future historians and, she evidently hoped, generations yet unborn.The 51-year-old invoked figures such as Martin Luther King, the civil rights leader, Thurgood Marshall, the first Black supreme court justice, and her “personal heroine”, Judge Constance Baker Motley, a former district court judge and New York state senator.“They and so many others did the heavy lifting that made this day possible. And for all the talk of this historic nomination and now confirmation, I think of them as the true path-breakers. I’m just the very lucky first inheritor of the dream of liberty and justice for all.”Becoming tearful, putting a tissue to her nose, Jackson continued: “To be sure, I have worked hard to get to this point in my career and I have now achieved something far beyond anything my grandparents could have possibly ever imagined. But no one does this on their own.“The path was cleared for me so that I might rise to this occasion, and, in the poetic words of Dr Maya Angelou, I do so now, while ‘bringing the gifts my ancestors gave’.”There was applause and she took a deep breath.“‘I … I am the dream and the hope of the slave’.”It was a quotation from Angelou’s poem Still I Rise.A shiver of emotion ran through the crowd, which rose as one. It included Jesse Jackson, 80, a civil rights veteran who was there when King was assassinated.Her voice quivering with feeling that seemed to match the enormity of the moment, Jackson, watched by her parents, husband and daughters, went on.“So as I take on this new role, I strongly believe that this is a moment in which all Americans can take great pride.“We have come a long way toward perfecting our union. In my family, it took just one generation to go from segregation to the supreme court of the United States.”It was hard to believe this was the same country that less than two years ago staged a similar outdoor event for the justice nominated before Jackson, Amy Coney Barrett.On that grey day, Trump gloated at the prospect of tipping the court firmly in conservatives’ favour. The audience was appreciably less than diverse than for Jackson. It also proved to be a Covid super-spreader event. Time will tell if Friday goes the same way.Ketanji Brown Jackson brings a personal narrative no other justice can matchRead moreJackson is replacing the retiring Stephen Breyer, 83, and so liberals will remain firmly in the minority when, from October, she begins hearing vital cases on affirmative action, gay rights and voting rights.This week, Mitch McConnell refused to say whether he would even grant another Biden pick a hearing if Republicans regain the Senate majority. Friday’s heady euphoria was only a brief respite from demands for structural reform to restore balance to the court.But what a respite it was. Trump presented one vision of America, infused with white identity politics and great men of history. This presented another, more generous in spirt, more authentic to the nation’s true origin story.Biden said: “This is not only a sunny day. I mean this from the bottom of my heart. This is going to let so much sun shine on so many young women, so many young Black women, so many minorities that it’s real. It’s real! We’re going to look back – and nothing to do with me – we’re going to look back and see this as a moment of real change in American history.”TopicsKetanji Brown JacksonThe US politics sketchUS politicsDemocratsUS supreme courtUS constitution and civil libertiesLaw (US)RacenewsReuse this content More

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      Ketanji Brown Jackson makes history as first Black woman confirmed to US supreme court

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      Ketanji Brown Jackson makes history as first Black woman confirmed to US supreme courtJackson confirmed 53 votes to 47, and will become first Black woman to serve in court’s more than 200-year history01:12Ketanji Brown Jackson, a liberal appeals court judge, was confirmed to the supreme court on Thursday, overcoming a rancorous Senate approval process and earning bipartisan approval to become the first Black woman to serve as a justice on the high court in its more than 200-year history.After weeks of private meetings and days of public testimony, marked by intense sparring over judicial philosophy and personal reflections on race in America, Jackson earned narrow – but notable – bipartisan support to become the 116th justice of the supreme court. The vote was 53 to 47, with all Democrats in favor. They were joined by three moderate Republicans, senators Mitt Romney of Utah, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, who defied deep opposition within their party to support Joe Biden’s nominee. Their support was a welcome result for the White House, which had been intent on securing a bipartisan confirmation.Ketanji Brown Jackson poised to make history as first Black female supreme court justice – liveRead moreJackson, who currently serves on the US court of appeals for the DC circuit, will replace Stephen Breyer, 83, the most senior member of the court’s liberal bloc. Breyer, for whom Jackson clerked early in her legal career, said he intends to retire from the court this summer.At 51, Jackson is young enough to serve on the court for decades. Her ascension, however, will do little to tilt the ideological balance of the high court, dominated by a 6-3 conservative majority. But it does mean for the first time in the court’s history that white men are in the minority.Kamala Harris, the first Black woman to serve as US vice-president, presided over the Senate vote as Jackson became the first Black woman to join the supreme court, underscoring the historic nature of her confirmation. Harris called for the final vote on Jackson’s nomination with a smile on her face, and the chamber broke into loud applause when the judge was confirmed.“Today, we are taking a giant, bold and important step on the well-trodden path to fulfilling our country’s founding promises,” Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said just before the final vote. “This is a great moment for Judge Jackson. But it is an even greater moment for America as we rise to a more perfect union.”The White House has announced that Biden, Harris and Jackson will deliver remarks on Friday to celebrate the confirmation. Jackson and Biden watched the final Senate vote together in the Roosevelt Room of the White House.Biden shared a photo taken with Jackson at the White House, saying on Twitter: “Judge Jackson’s confirmation was a historic moment for our nation. We’ve taken another step toward making our highest court reflect the diversity of America. She will be an incredible justice, and I was honored to share this moment with her.”Judge Jackson’s confirmation was a historic moment for our nation. We’ve taken another step toward making our highest court reflect the diversity of America. She will be an incredible Justice, and I was honored to share this moment with her. pic.twitter.com/K8SAh25NL5— President Biden (@POTUS) April 7, 2022
      Assailing Jackson’s record, but acknowledging Republicans did not have the votes to stop her confirmation, minority leader Mitch McConnell implored the judge to embrace the textualist approach of conservative justices.“The soon-to-be justice can either satisfy her radical fan club or help preserve the judiciary that Americans need, but not both,” McConnell said ahead of the vote on Thursday. “I’m afraid the nominee’s record tells us which is likely, but I hope judge Jackson proves me wrong.”Her confirmation to the lifetime post represents the fulfillment of a promise Biden made to his supporters at the nadir of his 2020 campaign for president, when he vowed to nominate the first Black woman to the supreme court, if elected president and a vacancy arose. The opportunity presented itself earlier this year, at another low point for Biden, with momentous domestic and foreign challenges weighing on his presidency.During the public hearings, Jackson vowed to be an independent justice who would seek to ensure that the words inscribed on the marbled supreme court building – Equal Justice Under the Law – were a “reality and not just an ideal”. With her parents and daughters present, Jackson recounted for the Senate judiciary committee her family’s generational journey, as the daughter of public school teachers raised in the segregated south who would rise to become a justice on a court that once denied Black Americans citizenship.Yet any hope by the White House that Jackson’s historic nomination might defuse some of the bitter partisanship that senators lament has turned the process into a “circus” quickly evaporated.With an eye to the November midterm elections, Republicans led an aggressive campaign against the judge during her confirmation hearings and in conservative media, raising questions about her record in an effort to paint her as an “activist judge” who is soft on crime. They used the confirmation proceedings to air conservative grievances about past supreme court nominations and to wage culture war battles over critical race theory, crime and transgender women in sports.Couched in thinly coded appeals to racism and the far-right fringes with nods to the QAnon conspiracy theory, some Republicans accused Jackson of being too lenient on child sexual abuse offenders, claims she forcefully rebutted “as a mother and a judge”. Legal experts have said her decisions in such criminal cases were within the mainstream while independent factcheckers concluded that the attacks were misleading and a distortion of her record.Democrats, and the handful of Republicans who supported her, praised her qualifications and demeanor, and in particular the restraint she showed during some stinging exchanges with conservative senators. They sought to defend her record, noting that her sentencing record was within the mainstream of the federal judiciary, while emphasizing the support she had earned from within the legal community, including among conservative justices, and her endorsement from the Fraternal Order of Police, which cited her family’s law enforcement background.In a mark of just how polarizing the process of confirming a supreme court nominee has become, the Senate judiciary committee deadlocked along party lines over her nomination. The resulting tie prompted Democrats to execute a rare procedural maneuver to “discharge” her nomination from the committee to the floor, with a vote by the full Senate. The NAACP said the vote by 11 Republicans against Jackson’s nomination was a “stain” on the committee.The final Senate vote on her confirmation was among the closest in supreme court history.A graduate of Harvard and Harvard Law School, Jackson served on the independent US sentencing commission, an agency that develops sentencing guidelines, before becoming a federal judge.While she shares an elite background with the other justices, her work as a public defender sets her apart. The last justice with experience representing criminal defendants was Thurgood Marshall, the towering civil rights lawyer who became the first Black member of the supreme court.TopicsKetanji Brown JacksonUS supreme courtLaw (US)US politicsUS SenatenewsReuse this content More

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      ‘Judge Jackson stands on the shoulders of giants’: women of color on a day to celebrate

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      ‘Judge Jackson stands on the shoulders of giants’: women of color on a day to celebrateKetani Brown Jackson becomes the first Black female justice on US’s highest legal body after her confirmation passes 53-47 Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination to the US supreme court has passed the Senate and she will now become the first Black female justice on America’s highest legal body after being nominated by Joe Biden earlier this year.Jackson’s nomination has been widely praised by women of color, especially after she sustained grueling confirmation hearings at the hands of some top Republicans who seemed dedicated to political points-scoring and whose criticisms often seemed like racist dog-whistling.Here are four women of color talking about Jackson and the significance of her nomination:Kamala Harris, US vice-president“I’ll tell you what I think you know. Judge Jackson is a phenomenal jurist,” Harris said last month in Selma, Alabama, during the 57th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday”.Jackson “proves her commitment not only to public service but to equal justice and equal rights”, Harris added.“As she makes history, Judge Jackson, like us all, stands on the shoulders of giants. She and we are their legacy.”Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center“The world demands untold levels of strength from Black women on a daily basis. The perseverance Jackson held close is all too familiar to Black women across this country,” Graves wrote in a CNN op-ed last month during Jackson’s confirmation hearings.“​​We hailed her career and celebrated not only her, but also the work of countless Black women silenced, erased and excluded from the top echelon of the legal profession,” she said, adding: “This will be the legacy of her rise to the supreme court: a young Black girl, one of a generation of Black girls, joyful at the sight of new possibilities for her own life.”Ann Claire Williams, retired US circuit judge of the US court of appeals for the 7th circuitIn a statement on behalf of the American Bar Association’s standing committee on the federal judiciary, Williams wrote: “Judge Jackson has a sterling reputation for integrity. Judges and lawyers who have known her in every capacity uniformly praised her character, calling her integrity ‘beyond reproach’, ‘first rate’, and ‘impeccable’.”“Our extensive review leads us to conclude that Judge Jackson meets the highest standards of integrity, professional competence, and judicial temperament,” Williams continued, granting Jackson the ABA’s highest rating.Angela Onwuachi-Willig, dean of Boston University School of Law“We don’t only get judged by our actions as individuals, all Black people get judged by our actions,” Onwuachi-Willig said in reference to Jackson’s confirmation hearings. “That’s an enormous weight. Judge Jackson was carrying that weight for hours and hours and hours, and I felt that was a human moment.”“With nearly 10 years of service as a federal judge, experience clerking for Supreme court justice Stephen Breyer and two lower-court judges, and a record of leadership on the United States Sentencing Commission, she will make an incredible supreme court justice,” Onwuachi-Willig also said in a letter, along with more than 200 other Black women law deans and professors, that urged the Senate’s confirmation of Jackson.TopicsKetanji Brown JacksonUS supreme courtLaw (US)US politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Senate judiciary committee nears vote on Ketanji Brown Jackson

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      Senate judiciary committee nears vote on Ketanji Brown JacksonCommittee vote expected to be evenly split, 11-11, forcing Democrats to ‘discharge’ the nomination The Senate judiciary committee on Monday neared a vote on the historic nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson, poised to be the first Black woman confirmed to the supreme court.Following days of interrogation and debate over Jackson’s qualifications, the committee vote was expected to be evenly split, 11-11. That would force Democrats to “discharge” the nomination, delaying but not denying confirmation.Before the vote could take place, the committee adjourned to await the arrival of its 22nd member, the California Democrat Alex Padilla, whose flight to Washington was delayed.A vote to discharge Jackson’s nomination was expected as early as Monday evening. That would set up hours of additional debate on the Senate floor.Democrats and the White House hope to confirm Jackson to the lifetime position on the court before Congress recesses for the Easter holiday on Friday. The 51-year-old was confirmed by the Senate to the US court of appeals for the DC circuit last year with the support of three Republicans.Ketanji Brown Jackson to receive rare Republican vote as Collins says yesRead moreOnly one of those Republicans, Susan Collins of Maine, has committed to voting for her again.Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has said he will not support Jackson’s nomination to the supreme court​​, calling her an “activist to the core”, outside the judicial mainstream.Lisa Murkowski of Alaska has not said how she intends to vote, but is seen as one of only two more Republicans, along with Mitt Romney of Utah, who might support Jackson.If confirmed, Jackson will replace the retiring liberal justice Stephen Breyer, for whom she clerked, and would make history as the first Black woman and only the sixth woman to sit on the court in more than 200 years. Her confirmation would, however, do nothing to change the ideological balance of a court on which conservatives outnumber liberals 6-3.In his opening remarks on Monday, Dick Durbin of Illinois, the committee’s Democratic chair, praised Jackson’s “impeccable qualifications” and said her experience as a public defender would bring a “missing perspective to the court”.“This committee’s action today in nothing less than making history,” Durbin said. “I’m honored to be a part of it. I will strongly and proudly support Judge Jackson’s nomination.”Durbin also lamented Republican hostility toward Jackson, accusing senators of leveraging “vile” and “discredited” attacks on her record and character.“She stayed calm and collected. She showed dignity, grace and poise,” Durbin said. “It is unfortunate that our hearing came to that, but if there is one positive to take away from these attacks, it is that the nation got to see the temperament of a good, strong person truly ready to serve on the highest court in the land.”Many Republicans used the hearing on Monday to rehash their attacks on Jackson, accusing her of handing down lenient sentences to child sex crime offenders when she was a federal trial court judge, a claim independent factcheckers have said is baseless and lacks context.During her hearings, Jackson forcefully defended her record, telling senators these were among the most traumatic and haunting cases she dealt with and that she did her “duty to hold the defendants accountable”.Republicans also sought to portray Jackson as “soft on crime”, a line of attack dismissed outright by the American Bar Association, which testified that she was strongly qualified for the position.Republicans on the committee appear uniformly opposed to Jackson’s nomination, starting with the ranking member, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who announced he would not vote to confirm Jackson because “she and I have fundamental, different views on the role of judges and the role that they should play in our system of government”.On Monday, Graham again used his time to decry Democrats’ treatment of nominees named by Republican presidents.“If we were in charge, she would not have been before this committee,” Graham said.His point was that Republican control of the Senate would have forced Democrats to put forward a more “moderate” – in his view – nominee. But Democrats saw the comment as a plain-spoken acknowledgment of Republicans’ hardball tactics when it comes to the supreme court, after the GOP refused to let Barack Obama fill a vacancy in 2016 – an act without precedent.Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, compared proceedings on Jackson’s nomination to Festivus, the holiday celebrated on the TV series, Seinfeld.“There’s been a lot of airing of grievances,” Booker said, adding: “I’ve heard things that are just ridiculous.”During more than 30 hours of hearings last month, Jackson pledged to be an independent justice who would decide cases from a “neutral position”. She defended her record while reflecting on her personal story as the daughter of public school teachers in the segregated south.As the 22-member panel convened on Monday, Joe Biden said Jackson would “bring extraordinary qualifications, deep experience and intellect, and a rigorous judicial record to the supreme court.“She deserves to be confirmed as the next justice.”TopicsKetanji Brown JacksonUS supreme courtUS SenateLaw (US)US politicsRepublicansDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

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      Ketanji Brown Jackson to receive rare Republican vote as Collins says yes

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      Ketanji Brown Jackson to receive rare Republican vote as Collins says yesMaine senator says she will vote to confirm Joe Biden’s nominee: ‘There can be no question she is qualified’ The Maine senator Susan Collins will vote to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson to the US supreme court, giving Joe Biden’s nominee a rare Republican vote as she proceeds towards becoming the first Black woman ever to sit on the nine-judge panel.Ketanji Brown Jackson hearing reveals racist fears of Republicans | Steve PhillipsRead more“I have decided to support the confirmation of Judge Jackson to be a member of the supreme court,” Collins, a Republican moderate, told the New York Times after meeting the nominee a second time.“There can be no question that [Jackson] is qualified to be a supreme court justice.”The confirmation was not in doubt. Democrats need only their own 50 votes in the evenly divided Senate to put Jackson on the court, given the casting vote of the vice-president, Kamala Harris. Joe Manchin, a centrist Democrat from West Virginia, had already confirmed his support.But the vice-president’s tie-breaking vote has never been required to confirm a supreme court justice, making Collins’ vote at least symbolically important.Collins’ support also comes at a time of bitter partisan divide that was underscored by hostile and politically loaded questioning of Jackson led by white, hard-line Republican men, prominently including Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley.Ahead of a confirmation vote next week, other Republican moderates could follow Collins and announce support for Jackson. In particular, Mitt Romney of Utah, the 2012 Republican nominee for president, has said he has not yet decided.Jackson will replace Stephen Breyer when he retires this summer. As Breyer is a member of the outmatched liberal group on the court, his replacement will not alter the 6-3 conservative majority.Republicans including the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, have complained that Jackson would not take a position on calls from progressives to expand the court in order to redress its ideological balance, during confirmation hearings last week.Speaking to the Times, Collins said: “In recent years, senators on both sides of the aisle have gotten away from what I perceive to be the appropriate process for evaluating judicial nominees.“In my view, the role under the constitution assigned to the Senate is to look at the credentials, experience and qualifications of the nominee. It is not to assess whether a nominee reflects the individual ideology of a senator or would vote exactly as an individual senator would want.”Supreme court confirmations have become highly political and increasingly rancorous.In 2016, as Senate majority leader, McConnell refused even a hearing for Barack Obama’s final nominee, Merrick Garland, thereby holding a seat open in the hope it would be filled by a Republican president. Collins duly voted to confirm Donald Trump’s first nominee, Neil Gorsuch, the beneficiary of such hardball tactics.Collins also voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s second nominee, who vehemently denied accusations of sexual assault.‘You’re my star’: high points of Ketanji Brown Jackson confirmation hearingsRead moreBut Collins voted not to confirm Amy Coney Barrett, a hardline conservative installed shortly before the 2020 presidential election in place of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal lion, in stark contravention of supposed principles about confirmations close to elections laid out by McConnell four years before.During the Democratic primary in 2020, Joe Biden promised to put a Black woman on the supreme court. Some Republicans voiced opposition to such a promise, disregarding precedent including Trump’s vow to name a woman to replace Ginsburg.In 2021, Collins was one of three Republicans who voted to confirm Jackson to a federal appeals court. The other two were Lindsey Graham of South Carolina – a hostile questioner in Jackson’s supreme court hearings – and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Murkowski has not said which way she will vote this time.Explaining her vote to the Times, Collins cited Jackson’s “breadth of experience as a law clerk, attorney in private practice, federal public defender, member of the US Sentencing Commission and district court judge for more than eight years”.In a tweet, the White House chief of staff, Ron Klain, said: “Grateful to Senator Collins for giving fair, thoughtful consideration to Judge Jackson – and all of the president’s judicial nominations.”TopicsKetanji Brown JacksonUS supreme courtUS politicsLaw (US)newsReuse this content More