The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the
nation's largest LGBT rights advocate, on Tuesday came out against
Seventh Circuit U.S. Appeals Court Judge Amy Coney Barrett for the
Supreme Court, calling her a threat to LGBT rights.
Barrett is believed to be on President
Donald Trump's shortlist to fill the high court's vacancy created
after Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg's death last week.
(Related: LGBT
groups, Pete Buttigieg, Megan Rapinoe, Tim Cook mourn loss of Ruth
Bader Ginsberg.)
“Amy Coney Barrett's history tells a
story of anti-LGBTQ ideology, opposing basic rights thought to be
settled law, and an anti-choice ideology out of step with popular
opinion,” HRC
said in a blog post.
Trump has said that he will announce
his nominee for the court on Saturday.
In 2015, the Supreme Court in
Obergefell struck down state laws and constitutional
amendments that defined marriage as a heterosexual union. Barrett
sided with the dissenters in the case, who said the court shouldn't
decide the issue.
“[Chief Justice Roberts] said, those
who want same-sex marriage, you have every right to lobby in state
legislatures to make that happen, but the dissent's view was that it
wasn't for the court to decide,” Barrett said in a lecture. “So I
think Obergefell, and what we're talking about for the future
of the court, it's really a who decides question.”
Barrett has also said that Title IX
protections do not extend to transgender people, claiming it's a
“strain on the text” to reach that conclusion.
During a 2016 lecture at Jacksonville
University, Barrett misgendered transgender people, referring to
transgender women as “physiological males who identify as females.”
“People will feel passionately on
either side about whether physiological males who identify as females
should be permitted in bathrooms, especially where there are young
girls present,” she said.
Barrett has also called Roe v. Wade
an “erroneous decision,” leaving little doubt how she would vote
in a case challenging the ruling.
According to various outlets, Trump met
with Barrett on Monday and again on Tuesday. Trump was quoted by CNN
as saying that he believes Barrett will be very well received by “his
people.”
(Related: HRC
says next president should fill Ruth Bader Ginsburg's vacancy.)