#OurCourt: Amy Comey Barrett

It’s official – one week prior to the upcoming election, the Senate has confirmed Amy Comey Barrett.  The Supreme Court is now overly conservative with six far-right justices who could erode the rights of LGBTQ+ people, people of color, access to affordable healthcare, and reproductive justice. “It’s clear where the priorities of this administration lie,” says Fred Swanson, Gay City’s Executive Director. “Rather than focus on a pandemic that has killed more than 225,000 people in America and about 2,000 in Washington state alone and led to prevalence of a pre-existing condition for nearly nine million people, the Administration prioritized this Supreme Court nomination.” Gay City: Seattle’s LGBTQ Center joined CenterLink, the Human Rights Campaign, and several LGBTQ+ community centers and allied organizations across the country to release a formal letter to the full United States Senate in opposition to the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. Amy Coney Barrett is not an ally to the LGBTQ+ community:

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• • Barrett defended the Supreme Court’s dissenters on the landmark marriage equality case of Obergefell v. Hodges, questioning the role of the court in deciding the case.
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• • Claimed Title IX protections do not extend to transgender Americans, claiming it’s a “strain on the text” to reach that interpretation.
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• • Repeatedly misgendered transgender people, referring to transgender women as “physiological males,” while casting doubt on transgender rights.
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• • Refused to rehear a racial segregation case, raising concerns about her approach to Civil Rights issues.
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• • Consistently demonstrated opposition to reproductive rights: calling Roe an “erroneous decision” and a “dramatic shift.”