I can look past a lot of his no votes on spending bills, but if he torpedoed a Supreme Court Nomination, that would have been a whole different thing. I’m not surprised he’s voting yes, but I am a bit relieved.
Biden pledged to nominate a Black Female to the SCOTUS.
IMO, that is illegal under the Civil Rights Act of 1964
Someone replied to my earlier post that since the employer discriminated against black women for 200 years, this nomination would be Ok. I was always taught that Two Wrongs don’t make a right
Ketanji Brown Jackson may well be qualified, but that is not my point.
Your opinion on this is the same as Ted Cruz. How does that make you feel?
We nominated only white men for 200 years, and nobody said “boo” about discrimination until a Black woman was nominated. That tells me this objection isn’t really about discomfort with discrimination.
Shall we be candid? No matter what Biden said or didn’t say, folks like you were always going to label her an affirmative-action hire. You understand she’s more experienced than the 4 most recent judges combined, she’s highly rated by the ABA, and has no real issues in her history. Instead of saying “yep that’s a good judge”, you want to complain that an incredibly political process is, well, political. All I can say is “oh well, we see you.”
Ok so go urge your representatives to vote against confirmation and also pressure them to impeach Biden.
It is quite interesting that no one tried to say that Ronald Reagan or Donald Trump were violating the Civil Rights Act by pledging to nominate a woman to the Supreme Court. Not to mention, political appointees probably don’t run afoul of the proscriptions against discrimination in employment (according to the definition of employee in the Act) - and of course a SCOTUS justice isn’t actually an employee of the President.
nm, points already made
what about my claim that he likely had already decided that she was a qualified appointment, and had her in mind, when he announced that he was going to appoint a black woman?
When he made the announcement, reporters were pretty easily able to construct a short list of possible people he was referring to. She was included. It’s not like he said he was going to pick a black woman and then announced the name of somebody obscure - it was fairly easy to predict that she was a likely choice.
It’s interesting that you should think that, given that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 specifically exempts federal service from its employment protections.
Exactly so. Trump announced he would be nominating a woman to replace RBG (Justice Barrett). I don’t remember hearing any belly-aching from mens rights advocates about that, but maybe I missed it. There must be something about Jackson that is different this time. Hmm, what could that be? - nope, can’t put my finger on it.
Didn’t Joe Biden say back in 1991/92 that Thomas wouldn’t have been nominated if not black?
I swear sometimes Biden is a secret Republican.
I don’t know if he said that, but it was Thurgood Marshall’s seat. So, despite the hand wringing about how racist it would be to decide that it was the “black
man” seat, that is what it turned out to be. At the time, as I recall, this was viewed as the prevailing wisdom surrounding President GHW Bush’s pick.
It might be if this was done prior to consideration of any candidates. But after consideration, if one determines that the most qualified are all black women, then that would be legal, in my understanding. IANAL.
He really didn’t have an extreme judicial philosophy, and his professorial background I suppose could make him seem like a know it all asshole, but he did know a hell of a lot.
His problem was that he couldn’t help but try to argue why he was right. Just the year before Scalia was able to hold his tongue (Scalia refused to agree or disagree that Marbury v. Madison was correctly decided. 
) and every Supreme Court nominee has been able to do so since. But Bork just couldn’t. They would try to say that because of his writings, he was against contraception. He took the bait and said that he wasn’t against contraception but just that Griswold was poorly decided and just couldn’t stop himself from saying why.
Did he?
Or, if faced with a situation where you have dozens (perhaps hundreds) of qualified candidates, I don’t think it’s illegal or even bigoted to say that the chance to add a new layer of diversity to the court makes some particular candidates slightly more preferable.
And that, in my opinion, is why it’s different to say that you want to select a black female for the job than saying you’d only consider a white male. We’ve had lots of white males on the court; adding another doesn’t provide any new perspective. But that’s decidedly different for a black woman, precisely because no such person has ever been on the court before.
I’d feel similar if the president had identified any other discrete group that had never before had its viewpoint represented on the court.
I don’t have an issue with it for a different reason: there is no reason for secrecy. It was time in 1981, a sufficient number of women having risen through the ranks, that one should be on the Supreme Court. In 1967, a black man should have been on the Supreme Court. In 1991, there should have been a balance. Likewise for RGB’s seat, the balance should have stayed with a female nominee.
I don’t think anyone disagrees with these things in principle, but there is something icky about using race and gender as benchmarks as we have a poor history with using them. What can be used for good can be used for evil. And I do fear that continuing to use them, after we have many qualified minorities in position, for what will end up being for hundreds of years (first gay, first transgender, first Native American, first female Native American, etc) doesn’t help heal the wounds.
But despite any earlier comments I’ve made, I’m glad that we are taking one more step, even if I wished it wouldn’t be so explicit because I don’t like the categories which divide us.
I opened a debate thread to discuss Bork.
And just to follow up, it becomes an icky numbers game. I believe that blacks are 12% of the population. So if someone declares (and no blame to Biden, Trump or Reagan) that the next nominee will be, and only will be, a black female, the President has excluded, first 50% of the population from consideration. Then if you take 12% of that 50%, that leaves 6% of the population.
Due to historical discrimination, I would assume that qualified black women are not 6% of the qualified nominees. Notwithstanding that, should we exclude 94% of qualified nominees? I don’t consider that as “slightly more preferable” as you stated. I consider it a huge lift.
Unfortunately, the only way to defeat that old sort of thinking that only white men are qualified for these positions is to EXPLICITLY decide to reject it. That means EXPLICITLY going for these firsts, because only when the “firsts” are over can we even start to try for real full representation. Even then it will take a while most likely. But these are necessary steps.