Sham Nomination Hearings in the Senate

Floor Speech

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Ms. JAYAPAL. Mr. Speaker, I rise to oppose Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination and the sham hearings that are happening in the Senate today.

Even before President Trump nominated Judge Kavanaugh, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell warned that the millions of pages in Judge Kavanaugh's White House records would reopen controversies dating back to George W. Bush's administration and delay consideration of his nomination. But instead of following regular order, rather than obtaining Judge Kavanaugh's full record and sharing it in a timely fashion with all the Senators, Senate Republicans simply changed the rules. This is unacceptable.

The nine Justices who sit on the Supreme Court make crucial decisions about justice in our country. At times, the Court's landmark decisions have shown the best of who we are and what our country stands for, the ideas that our public schools should not be segregated based on race, that women have a right to make their own decisions about their bodies, and that everybody has the right to marry the person they love.

In other cases, Supreme Court decisions have been stains on our Nation; for instance, deciding that African Americans could not be U.S. citizens, upholding the cruel and unjust internment of Japanese Americans during World War I, maintaining segregation, and striking down key provisions protecting access to voting.

Make no mistake, Judge Kavanaugh poses a serious threat to the rights that we hold so dear. Take, for instance, the case of Jane Doe, the teenage girl who sought an abortion last year while being held in government custody in Texas.

Jane Doe did everything herself to secure that abortion. She got permission from a judge. She got her own transportation. And yet, the Federal Government physically blocked her from leaving the government- run shelter where she was detained.

So then the ACLU sued on her behalf, and her case eventually made it in front of Judge Kavanaugh. Although he recognized the time sensitivity, even clarifying that she would no longer be able to seek a legal abortion in Texas at 20 weeks, Judge Kavanaugh blocked Jane Doe's access to her legally allowable abortion when she was about 15 weeks pregnant. He gave the Trump administration 11 more days to find a sponsor, a process that he was aware takes months to complete. He told Jane Doe that, after those 11 days, she could ask a lower court again for an abortion. If at 17 weeks she was unsuccessful, then he told her that she could bring it up again to him for consideration, which would have been scheduled when she was, at that point, 18 or 19 weeks pregnant, if she were lucky. Court delays could have pushed it even further, seriously putting her at risk of being outside the window to obtain something that was her legal right.

But, fortunately, the full court overturned Judge Kavanaugh's decision a few days later, and Jane Doe was able to proceed in the course that she chose for her own body, a decision that Judge Kavanaugh vehemently opposed.

Fortunately for Jane Doe, Judge Kavanaugh's decision was not the crucial vote deciding her future. But if Judge Kavanaugh is confirmed, the rest of the country will not be so lucky.

There is broad consensus that Judge Kavanaugh would be a decisive vote to eliminate women's constitutionally protected right to abortion, a right, by the way, that is not partisan. Seventy-one percent of voters support that right.

In addition, Judge Kavanaugh's record shows that he could be the deciding vote to undermine access to healthcare for millions of Americans. He has written dissenting opinions in three cases that would have undermined the Affordable Care Act. In one of those dissenting opinions, Judge Kavanaugh argued that a President could choose not to enforce a law like the Affordable Care Act if he thought it was unconstitutional, even if a court had already ruled that it is constitutional.

Further, in a 2013 speech, Judge Kavanaugh said that it is ``a traditional exercise of power by Presidents'' to pick and choose which laws to enforce. At a time when we are hearing reports from the highest levels of our government that top aides to the President are literally hiding papers from him so that he cannot execute orders that they view as dangerous to our security and would result in geopolitical crises, what we need is a Justice who will serve as a check on the executive, as our Founders intended.

The Senate has a responsibility to the American people to fully vet Supreme Court nominees. The most basic function is for them to do the leg work of obtaining all records related to those nominees. I strongly urge my Senate colleagues to adjourn the Kavanaugh hearing, as Senator Blumenthal and my good colleagues proposed. A ``no'' vote is a vote for the people.

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