Remembering Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Floor Speech

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Mr. COONS. Mr. President, on this past Friday evening, on Rosh Hashanah, our Nation lost a giant of our Supreme Court. We lost a trailblazer for women's equality, a woman who, though diminutive in size, was a giant and a force for justice.

For my daughter and for all Americans, I am so grateful for the work and the service and the life of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Having passed on Rosh Hashanah, the tradition of the Jewish people teaches that she is especially blessed, particularly righteous.

It is heartbreaking that her dying wish, dictated to her granddaughter, was that the voters should choose the next President, and that next President her successor, and, already, there are some who are racing to undo that wish.

This was her wish because she understood the consequences of this decision for the Senate, for the American people, and for the Supreme Court, to which she dedicated 27 years of service.

If we push through a nominee now, just 43 days before an election, as half of our States are already voting, the very legitimacy of the Supreme Court may be undermined by further politicization in an already divided country.

My friends, my colleagues in the other party, used the argument in blocking the nomination of Merrick Garland in 2016 that we must give the American people a voice for the selection of the next Justice. That argument was advanced 10 months before the next election. Here, today, on this floor, the exact argument is being advanced just 43 days before an election in which half of our States are already voting.

As a colleague from Alaska recently said, the precedent set by the majority in 2016 is the precedent by which they should live now. Fair is fair. I cannot agree more.

On the ballot, on the agenda, on the docket of the Supreme Court is healthcare. This decision will have an impact on all Americans of all stripes and backgrounds. One week after the election, a case will be argued in front of the Supreme Court, Texas v. United States, which seeks to remove all that is left of the Affordable Care Act's protections--protections against preexisting condition discrimination for 100 million Americans and health insurance itself for 20 million, in the middle of a pandemic in which 6 million Americans have been infected and have new preexisting conditions, and, in some ways most gallingly, that provision of the Affordable Care Act which prohibits gender discrimination by insurance companies.

All of this is at stake, as are protections going forward after this election for clean air and clean water, for equal pay for equal work, and the right to organize. It is all on the ballot and will be on the docket.

Let me close by calling on my colleagues to do what is fair and what I believe is right: to respect their own precedent and let the American people have a voice in just 43 days and then proceed, after the election, to honor Justice Ginsburg's dying wish; to focus on delivering relief to the American people in a package to address this pandemic in our next few weeks, rather than diving deeper into division.

It is my fervent prayer that we can yet find a way together to listen to the voice of the people and the voice of this most storied Justice.

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